Qualcomm’s Ultrasonic fingerprint scanner first made its way to Samsung’s Galaxy S10 lineup, but suffice to say, the security feature’s performance has been less-than-impressive. In light of this, rumours online are beginning to suggest that Samsung may be scrapping the feature with all future Galaxy smartphones.
Like all currently existing in-display fingerprint scanners, Qualcomm’s Ultrasonic fingerprint scanners enables both the Galaxy S10 and Note10 flagships to do away with the traditional fingerprint scanners. Allowing users to simply have their fingerprints scanned and verified from under the display.
Unfortunately, the Qualcomm’s fingerprint scanner has been plagued both with several issues and loopholes since its introduction. For a start, the displays of the Galaxy S10 and Note10 series’ are unable to play nice with any run-of-the-mill screen protectors, other than the ones being sold by Samsung. And while an Ultrasonic-compatible screen protector does exist, the IP and manufacturing rights currently belongs to a single company called Whitestone Dome.
The Ultrasonic fingerprint scanner is also not as secure as Samsung says, with someone already having proven earlier in the year that it can be fooled by a fake mould of a registered fingerprint. Mercifully, the Korean electronics giant has rolled out a security patch for the flaw last month.
In any case, Qualcomm clearly isn’t about to back down from this if the rumour is true. To that end, it’s expected that the semiconductor maker will introduce a new and improved version of its Ultrasonic fingerprint scanner at its annual Snapdragon Tech Summit that’s kicking off next month.
(Source: Korea Times via Hot Hardware, Techspot)
