Samsung is not going to be introducing the latest under-display fingerprint recognition feature with their 2018 flagship smartphone, Galaxy Note 9. KGI Securities research analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who has come up with this news, is the same person who earlier said that the under-screen fingerprint sensor could get introduced with Galaxy Note 9. He mentioned that Samsung changed its plans due to some technical irregularities.
Samsung will cancel this feature on Note 9 because both ultrasonic (provided by Qualcomm) and optical (provided by Samsung LSI, Goodix, Egis, and Synaptics) solutions cannot meet Samsung’s technical requirements – A KGI research note
The technical issues were mostly centered around the usage of screen protectors and different environmental conditions. These were reportedly affecting the recognition rate and power consumption. These are the same technical difficulties that Samsung faced previously while including the fingerprint scanner under the display of the recently launched Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+. In the case of those devices, Samsung shifted the fingerprint scanner to the rear end, like the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ models. Though Samsung is still leading in terms of advancement in under-display recognition in OLED panels, the mass production of the technology might take as long as early 2019.
We recognize that under-display fingerprint recognition is the key for full-screen designs, and we don’t think that facial recognition can fully replace fingerprint recognition. Also, as under-display fingerprint recognition module has a unit price 4-6 times that of capacitive fingerprint recognition module (or higher), we think that once the former module goes into mass production, the contribution to suppliers’ sales and profits will be significant. – KGI
Apple has reportedly abandoned the Touch ID & decided to stick with the TrueDepth Face ID system with all of its upcoming iPhone and iPad models, due in 2018.
