Company said to be pondering return to Touch ID

May 15, 2018 05:45 GMT  ·  By

In what appears to be the news that makes no sense, Apple is now said to be looking into building an iPhone with an ultrasonic in-display fingerprint scanner as a possible return to Touch ID.

Details are very scarce at this point, but Korean publication Chosun reports that Apple is considering bringing back fingerprint scanners on its devices. The company doesn’t want to use optical readers like the brands that already embraced this technology, but instead go for ultrasonic, which is said to capture every little detail of the finger, thus offering increased accuracy.

The better the accuracy, the bigger the chances for Apple to launch such a feature, as the company has become obsessed with providing authentication features with the highest level of accuracy. For example, Apple says there’s a chance of 1:1,000,000 for someone else to be able to unlock an iPhone X protected by Face ID, while in the case of Touch ID, this accuracy is 1:50,000.

Increased accuracy

While no figures are available for this new ultrasonic in-display fingerprint reader just yet, it’s believed this technology could help Apple give up on the notch and at the same time retain an edge-to-edge design approach without giving up on strong security for the iPhone.

Of course, as with everything in the rumor stage, don’t take this for granted, as it doesn’t make any sense for Apple to return to Touch ID after investing so aggressively in Face ID. All 2018 iPhone models are expected to launch with facial recognition and give up on the fingerprint reader.

Samsung itself is also looking into similar tech that would be developed in-house, and the company reportedly wants to bring it to mass-production with the anniversary S10 in early 2019.

Until now, however, there’s still no sign of fingerprint sensors integrated into the screen of phones made by Apple and Samsung, though analysts expect the first models to launch next year.