Along with its Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 mobile platform, Qualcomm also debuted its next-gen ultrasonic fingerprint solutions – the Qualcomm Fingerprint Sensors, at the MWC Shanghai 2017. The new solution consists of sensors for Display, Glass and Metal, detection of directional gestures, and underwater fingerprint match and device wake-up.
Asides bringing new and enhanced features over the previous-generation Qualcomm Snapdragon Sense ID fingerprint tech, which was used on the Xiaomi Mi 6, they also detect heart beat and blood flow for improved mobile authentication experiences, the first commercially announced with integrated ultrasonic-based mobile solution.
While the Qualcomm Fingerprint Sensor for Display is capable of scanning through OLED display stacks of up to 1200um; that for Glass and Metal can scan through up to 800 µm of cover glass and up to 650 µm of aluminium. They are available as an integrated solution with Snapdragon Mobile Platforms as well as standalone sensors for non-Snapdragon platforms.
At the moment, the Qualcomm Fingerprint Sensors for Glass and Metal are compatible with the Snapdragon 660 and 630 Mobile Platforms, and future platforms (Snapdragon Mobile and non-Snapdragon) will have support for Qualcomm Fingerprint Sensors for Display, Glass and Metal.
OEMs have started getting the Qualcomm Fingerprint Sensors for Glass and Metal, so they are are expected to arrive in retail devices released by the first half of 2018 (H1 2018). They will have the chance to evaluate the Qualcomm Fingerprint Sensor for Display by the fourth quarter of 2017 (Q4 2017).
Together with Vivo, Qualcomm showcased the new sensors for Display and Metal using modified Vivo XPLAY 6 versions. It also demoed the Sensor for Glass using a reference device made for demo purposes only.
