Synaptics Creating In-Display Fingerprint Sensors for 'Top Five OEM'

yes. i've had the iPhone X for over a month now.

 

I thought the Nexus One touchscreen from Synaptics did support multi-touch. Gizmodo even published rooting instructions on how to enable it.

It's just that it was turned off from the factory (and maybe made less than it could be) because Google's Eric Schmidt was such a fanboy of Steve Jobs that he voluntarily held back such support for years just to please Jobs... at least until the Palm Pre and HTC smartphone support for it finally forced Google's hand in early 2010.

Ironically, over six months before the iPhone was revealed by Jobs in early 2007, Synaptics had been publicly demoing their own touchscreen implementation on a reference phone called the Onyx. The screen was so sensitive and had such fine detail that it could even transmit a touchscreen kiss:



No production smartphone can even come close to doing that.

 

I was asking that question rhetorically, please read the rest of my post.

 

As I understand it, the FP is not placed under the display, just under the glas that covers the display. You still need a dedicated area for it. The main difference to current solutions is that it is a touch area rather than a touch button.

Seems the top 5 vendor in question is the Chinese manufacturer Vivo.

 

It's behind the entire display. See post#58:

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...for-top-five-oem.2094705/page-3#post-25589789

Yep. With the advantage of not needing bezel space set aside for a button.

Interesting! Especially because last summer Vivo demoed using the Qualcomm behind-display ultrasonic fingerprint sensor.

 

I don't get why everybody wants a Touch ID under the screen. It looks like you have to put your finger in that exact spot to work, which looks inconvenient, because you have to put your finger in a specific place on the big screen. On the home button is seamless because you feel where it is, it's more natural.

 

This + FaceID = best solution. For the people who prefer TouchID, you can continue using a fingerprint method without it infringing on the screen space and for those who like FaceID you can use that. Then, if there are people who want both, they can use both. You basically eliminate all the negatives by incorporating both.

 

Meh.. after using Face ID I could never go back. Having both might be useful in the one in a hundred times Face ID is not convienient.

 

Right, when you're blindly using it, like when unlocking inside a pocket.

Haptics could be used if they wanted to support such a scenario. Say, a vibration that gets stronger as your finger crosses the sensor area.

OTOH, FaceId can't do pocket unlock at all, and few seem to care.

 

I don't doubt that Face ID will be improved, but I seriously doubt that those improvements will solve the major underlying issues Face ID has; it fails to tell twins apart, it can also fail for siblings who look alike and children, it fails in Asian countries like Japan, South Korea and China where a large portion of the population wears surgical masks both in and outdoors (against smog, seasonal hay fever in Japan, or to avoid spreading germs) and it also fails obviously in other parts of the world where women are covering their faces with religious clothing.
Face ID is a terrible idea that Apple came up with as a work around because they couldn't figure out in-display fingerprint sensors in time for the new iPhone release.

 

A workaround that was 3 years in the making? That doesn’t really make any sense.

 

That all makes zero difference to me. It works great. If you fall into those categories, you either don’t get that phone or you use a passcode.

 

Yeah, the "as long as it doesn't affect me personally" attitude is such a great approach to life. Thanks for the tips.

 

I can only speak for myself. I’d imagine those inherent issues with Face ID that can never be fixed over time are not affecting many people with the phone. Just don’t buy the phone if it’s an issue for you or anyone else. Simple.

 

Given the generally assumed development cycle of the iPhone, this wouldn't be much of a surprise if it had been 3 years in the making.
Just because Face ID is a dumb idea, it doesn't mean that Apple cobbled it up in 3 months before the launch of iPhone X.
Apple has the best implementation of a fingerprint scanner in a consumer device, and they started using it beyond iOS devices to their MacBook line. Replacing Touch ID with something that's inferior, less convenient and ugly to boot (the notch would have made Jobs roll in his grave) only makes sense in a situation where Apple wanted to build a full-screen smartphone but couldn't come up with a working in-display version of Touch ID.

 

So which is it? Before you said FaceID was a workaround because they couldn’t get underscreen TouchID working; now it’s just a “dumb idea” three years in the making.

Yes, the A11 includes a 600 billion operations per second, dual-core neural network processor. No, they didn’t add that coprocessor just for Animoji or Portrait Lighting; those come along for the ride since you’ve got the hardware there for FaceID.

Apple chose to replace TouchID with FaceID because they think it provides a better overall experience for more users more of the time than did TouchID. Most users of the X prefer FaceID over TouchID, which proves Apple made the right decision.

Apple discontinued development of underscreen TouchID in 2016 when they cracked FaceID, so there’s no reason to expect it, ever. Synaptics is already a vendor of theirs, and even assuming Apple couldn’t do underscreen TouchID themselves (which seems to be very important for some to believe, for whatever reason), buying the sensor from Synaptics would be an option. But they don’t want it; they think FaceID is better, regardless of your opinion to the contrary.

And FaceID didn’t create the notch; there are 8 sensors/transducers in the notch area, and only 3 of them are for FaceID. There would have been a notch on the X with or without FaceID. Obviously so, since the notch is a deliberate design choice.

Certainly, Apple had the option not to add the ears and just continue to have a full width bezel like Samsung or LG—and every iPhone before. But they chose to add the ears and take advantage of wasted space. They prototyped both, and preferred the notch, with the extra screen area the ears provide.

That you personally don’t like the iconic notch, which Jobs would have loved, won’t bring back a full width bezel. The iPhone X is a smash hit, a home run. Apple will sell a record breaking number of units and have record breaking revenue this quarter, which Jobs also would have loved.

 

LOL. Saying Apple is "following" Samsung's lame attempt at facial recognition is like saying military grade night vision binoculars are "following" your granny's crossword puzzle magnifying glass.

 

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This is a key claim.

Apple thought when designing it, in the vacuum of user data that it would provide a better overall experience.

I believe the data is already showing that iPhone X users are being forced to enter their Pin code more often than Touch ID users. And that this is slowing down those users or even resulting in “missed sessions” which can be described as times when a user would normally have performed some task either in response to a push notification or on their own accord.

But the user does not do it because of friction from authentication.

These missed sessions are major ux no-nos as they lead to user apathy related to the iPhone. This eventually impacts customer satisfaction with the product.

The point of confusion most people seem to have is that the case is closed on Face ID being the superior and sole auth method for iOS devices.

In fact the opposite is true, where Touch ID devices likely require less pin entries and currently result in fewer missed sessions.

It is possible Face ID can be improved, as Touch ID was. However, I have a hypothesis that most of the missed sessions resulting from failed Face ID auth are due to physical interference or out of bound angles for the 3D face plot. I.e attempted auth while drinking a beverage (which fails) or under the edge of a conference table (also fails)

The delta between the Face ID missed sessions due to these interference types and Touch ID sessions that are not affected by them will govern whether Apple pursues the belt-and-suspenders approach to Auth on future iOS devices.

From my extensive use of iPhone X, I believe this is likely a big enough issue that we will see Touch ID return. But only Apple knows how systemic the problem is.

I would like to point out though, that if you look at Twitter there is a drumbeat if people saying they do not like Face ID, and often giving specific scenarios where it is failing for them: https://mobile.twitter.com/search?q=Face ID sucks&src=typed_query

 

FaceID will improve. There are almost 40 million iPhone X sold, a certain percentage will have problems, just like with TouchID. But like you said, only Apple knows how many.

 

Did you see my point about physical interferences? I do not think it is possible to improve Face ID for these situations.

It is like saying Apple will improve Touch ID for situations when the user is wearing ski gloves.

 

Yeah it’s not going to see through that coffee cup. Or through the conference table. But millions of people use gloves for months at a time.

But that under the conference table move doesn’t fool anyone, people think it’s a stealthy move but it’s not. Keep it on the table if you need to check email or whatever. When they see that under the table move, they assume you’re playing on your phone, otherwise you wouldn’t be trying to hide it.

 

Yes. This is the point that people can not seem to put together!

Sometimes there are situations where Face ID is best, like in “normal” active use of the device which 90% of the time probably falls within 15 degrees and some number of cm of depth from the Face.

But other times the phone is way out of these ranges or there is something obscuring like a coffee cup, or a beer can or a hand as you itch your nose or brush your teeth. Or a table for whatever reason.

For all those instances, even when the phone is in normal active use and an other hand would be unlocking the device via Touch ID, the unlock fails. It is not acceptable to have a 10 or even 5% auto auth failure rate. And I bet the X is floating in that range right now which is abysmal for UX.

This isn’t about sniping situations where Face ID works better than Touch ID, it is vice versa.

I don’t understand why people can’t accept that the union of capability of these two auths on a single device would cover far more situations and make a better iphone.

Regarding gloves for months that still does not matter because the X still requires a swipe up to unlock! Unless you’re wearing conductive gloves, you might as well just remove the glove, Touch ID and home press.

 

Based on Apple's past track record, they worked in parallel on both solutions -potentially more than just those 2- and when it became apparent that they couldn't get the better option ready on time, they fell back on Face ID. We'll probably never know the truth until some engineer's NDA expires but it's extremely unlikely that Apple decided to put all their eggs in one basket (Face ID) when developing their flagship product.

This is completely irrelevant. I would have been surprised if a company introducing a new product said that it offers a worse experience than the previous model.

Very unlikely. I'd be curious to see actual survey data on that, assuming that these users had a choice between an iPhone X with Touch ID or one with Face ID instead.
And that's not even taking into account post-purchase rationalization.

... until Apple figures out how to do without the notch, and then that will become the new "deliberate design choice."

I had a quick look at what the "full width bezel" looks on the latest models from Samsung, Xiaomi and Sony. They don't look anything like the full width bezel on the iPhone 8 or anything prior to the iPhone X. They look also arguably better than the Apple notch; the iPhone X has a better looking back though.

I didn't know Uri Geller was posting on MacRumors forums...

--- Post Merged, Dec 30, 2017 ---

The "but what about gloves" argument is a red herring. Doing almost anything on a touchscreen based phone still requires taking your gloves off anyway.
Assuming that Face ID improves and becomes at some point able to tell twins, siblings who look alike, children, etc. apart, it will still be useless in Asian countries where a large portion of the population wears surgical masks both in and outdoors all year round (against smog, seasonal hay fever in Japan, or to avoid spreading germs) and it will also fail obviously in other parts of the world where population are covering their faces with religious clothing.
Apple sells -or at least used to sell- more iPhones in Asia than in the U.S. and Europe combined, so that'll be a fun one to watch.

 

I know it’s important for some to believe Apple failed at TouchID underscreen. Not sure why.

Those who like fingerprint sensors will have lots of Android models to choose from in the coming years. Apple prefers the ears to having a full-width bezel, so those who don’t like the notch will also probably have to choose Android if they want a notchless flagship.

Its great that there are alternatives for those who don’t want the technology Apple has to offer. Choice is great!

I’m sure Apple appreciates your concern, but they know they can’t make everyone happy. They’re ok with that.