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Sonic Fingerprint Sensor for iPhone or SE?
December 15, 2019
 
Samsung phones use Qualcomm’s 3D Sonic Sensor that sits under the phone’s OLED display and is used for fingerprint recognition.  The thin (.2mm) can be used when fingers are wet, dry or contaminated, and coupled with anti-spoofing that is built-in to the sensor software, cannot be fooled by a photograph or a mold of a finger but module does not function with certain film-type screen protectors, which became an issue for Samsung early on.
 
Apple has been working on developing its own ultrasonic fingerprint sensor technology, and that development has called on some supply chain participants to develop or supply samples of various components that Apple is testing for future use, and leaks about those components have spurred a renewed focus on the potential that Apple will adopt the approach.  Apple has been working on such a project for some time and while it might appear in some form in 2020, the cycle for such a feature, if adopted, would likely begin in earnest in 2021, but will ultrasonic identification be an adjunct to Apple’s current facial ID system that uses structured light, or a replacement.  It would be hard to imagine Apple abandoning structured light facial recognition. Perhaps an iteration of the iPhone SE2 or iPhone ‘lite’ might be a starting point for  ultrasonic sensors in the iPhone line,  for cost control, but in Apple’s higher tier iPhones, it would be surprising to see ultrasonics as a replacement for structured light.