While passwords and passcodes are still used, biometric security has gained a lot of popularity in recent years. Japan Display has recently announced that they have begun development of their own glass-based fingerprint sensor which some are seeing as a possible upgrade over current silicon-based fingerprint sensors.
Note that these glass-based sensors aren’t the same as the in-display sensors that have been developed by the likes of Qualcomm or Synaptics, but given that these are transparent sensors, Japan Display believes that it could be used for new areas of applications. The company also expects that moving forwards, they could also potentially build flexible fingerprint sensors that will leverage their own flexible display technology, which once again hints at the possibilities of how it could be used.
That being said, one has to wonder about whether or not fingerprints will continue to remain the biometric of choice in the future. Samsung had previously tried to introduce a new trend with iris scanning, and Apple has attempted to make facial recognition popular with its Face ID tool for the iPhone X, but the jury is still out on whether or not this will be sufficient to replace fingerprints.
Japan Display expects that their sensors will reach commercial shipments in the fiscal year 2018.
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