How Fingerprint scanner plays an important role in our smartphones: Working of the under-screen fingerprint sensor....

How Fingerprint scanner plays an important role in our smartphones: Working of under-screen fingerprint sensor

In this article, we would talk about the fingerprint scanner.

Fingerprint scanner, as we know Fingerprint scanners are great and easy to use. Phones having Touch IDs are fast secure and they can be easily used for multiple purposes. A fingerprint scanner, under the screen, was patented in 2015 by Qualcomm. But no company implemented it but Vivo did it in 2018.

So, let’s find out how under the screen fingerprint scanner will work. To understand the working of the under-screen fingerprint scanner, first, we need to understand how normal touch IDs work and different types of the same.

The first device having fingerprint scanning technology was introduced by Motorola Atrix which used an optical fingerprint scanner technology. All these types of fingerprint scanners use a source light that hits the finger placed on the glass plate and it gets reflected back. And this reflected light passes through a lens and gets magnified. A light sensory system along with the charged couple device (CCD) catches this light and creates electrical impulses corresponding to it.

An analog to digital converter(A/D) converts the analog charges into a digital image (analog signal to digital signal) just like a camera. Using some image recognition algorithms, this image is further compared with the already calibrated fingers image which stored in the phone database to validate the same fingers.

under-screen fingerprint sensor

it creates a 2-dimensional image of the scanned finger due to which it is less secure and it can easily be tricked with a high-resolution image of the finger and it is also very bulky due to which it is unfit for smartphone applications.

The second type of fingerprint scanner is the Capacitive one. These types of fingerprint scanner use the same charged couple device under a metallic plate over which the finger comes into contact. The ridges of the finger conduct electricity which creates a pattern in the CCD.

Because as we know each finger has a unique pattern and then this pattern is converted into a digital pattern with the help of analog to digital converter (A/D) and used for validation with the calibrated finger.

The problem with this system depends on the conductivity of your skin and anything like dirt or water which may get trapped and can't create a true negative also, it can only be used under a metallic surface and not under a glass screen. For not compromising with space, now companies develop these fingerprint sensors on in screen or under-screen.

smartphone with an under-screen fingerprint 

Vivo is the first who announced a smartphone with an under-screen fingerprint scanner which actually uses an optical fingerprint scanning technology. This thing can only work with OLED panels because it has a light emitter and the sensor which emits light and captures it back and light can only pass through glass LCD panels have an obstructing back-light due to which optical sensors cannot be used with it.

The third type of fingerprints channel is called an ultrasonic fingerprint scanner, this ultrasonic fingerprint scanner is firstly introduced by Qualcomm in the name of sense ID. This system has a transmitter that used to send ultrasonic signals which can travel through the glass but gets reflected by human skin.

The returning ultrasonic sounds mechanical stress and is detected by the receiver which can identify ridges and valleys and other obstructions. It creates a 3d model of the fingerprint due to which it is highly secure and this system uses a Qualcomm MSM secure architecture for providing additional security by keeping the data captured from your fingerprint in a separate secure environment in your phone itself without sharing the data to any cloud.

In an in-screen fingerprint scanner, we will be sailing more space and thereby increasing the size of the battery having it in a better position. But there is something that we lose: speed. The phone introduced by Vivo has a time of unlocking 0.7 seconds which is 4 times that of the normal fingerprint scanner.

smartphone with side-mounted fingerprint scanner

Nowadays the side-mounted fingerprint scanner has also existed, these are also capacitive sensor. They have the advantage of being easily accessible and you can reach out for such sensors without looking at your phone or without holding your phone upright but many users do not prefer this side-mounted scanner so it’s popularity is getting down, because they prefer to under-display (in-display) or rear-mounted scanner.

But side-mounted fingerprint scanner has some disadvantages. The position of this sensor is in Right-hand side which are not comfortable to the people who are Left-handed especially using big phones.

In conclusion, we found that the fingerprint scanners are easy to use and it helps us from remembering countless user-names and passwords and it is also the best tool for the purpose of security provided by smartphone companies.

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author: @itsyourchoiceofficial