iPhone 2020 Rumored To Have Qualcomm’s Ultrasonic Fingerprint Scanner

Multiple reports from Economic Daily News have mentioned that iPhone reps are meeting with touchscreen-display manufacturers from Taiwan regarding implementing an ultrasonic fingerprint scanner for next year’s release of the iPhone.

iPhone is reported to be using Qualcomm supplied ultrasonic fingerprint scanner under the displays. There will at least be one model implementing this in 2020, although the plan can be postponed for 2021. Multiple analysts have also reported and predicted that Apple will do this in 2020 or 2021.

The technology has already been used in Samsung Galaxy S10 and Note 10 line up.

The difference between this and optical variants is that optical variants create a 2D image of our fingerprints, performing less well under the sunlight. But the ultrasonic scanner creates a 3D image that improves the scanning speed remarkably.

Gordon Thomas, director of Qualcomm, said during the 2019 Mobile World Congress conference in Barcelona that his company plans to develop and manufacture even bigger sensors with the ultimate goal of being able to allow the whole display as a fingerprint scanner.

This means future models will have both FaceID and TouchID, although it might only be found in higher-end models because the fingerprint scanner only works on OLED displays.