The improvement of future smartphone design could be hinged on a novel feature that every premium smarthphone maker already offers: fingerprint sensors. When they first came out, they looked like out-of-place circles in the front, back or wherever the sensor might be. Now, it seems invisible fingerprint sensors are the way to go.
Just this week, LG Innotek revealed their "under glass fingerprint sensor." Basically, instead of having a dedicated surface-level ring, the component would be made as part of the display. It seems this idea is being adopted by all major players already. The Swedish company that makes the rapid response scanners for Google Nexus devices reportedly showed off similar tech too.
Fingerprint scanners are highly convenient and can do away with alphanumeric passwords to access the phone. As Wired noted, this can easily go up to 50 times per day. While this is not the proper forum to discuss the pros and cons of fingerprint security, having fingerprint scanners baked into the display can solve one thing: design flaws.
For instance, the Nextbit Robin took an unusual approach and installed a fingerprint scanner on the side. It combined the power button with this feature. The question is, was it worth anything? The quick answer is no. This design is simply "not half as appealing as having it it hidden altogether," the Wired report explained.
Having fingerprint scanners under the glass and in the display can also make the actual tech work better. LG now promises that their false-acceptance rate is super low at 0.002 percent. Also, a practical benefit of a glass-encased fingerprint scanner is having a sleeker design. This is practical especially for phones which boast waterproofing.
So will this trend catch on? It seems like it. The sheer ease of use of having fingerprint scanners is simply too good to pass up. Besides, when it comes to security and its inherent flaws, having a fingerprint scanner can be used as a convenient and nice looking two (or three) step verification.
