Vivo will be the first to use an in-display fingerprint sensor developed by Synaptics.
Earlier this week, Synaptics announced it is ready with its in-screen fingerprint sensor for bezel-less smartphone displays. During the announcement, the sensor-maker had said it has collaborated with a "top 5" company and the technology is already in mass production. As per a Forbes report, turns out the "top 5" company is Vivo who will be the first OEM to make a smartphone with an in-display fingerprint sensor.
Analyst Patrick Moorhead detailed his experience of witnessing the pre-production Vivo phone with the technology in the Forbes article. He describes the experience to be "fast and simple."
Here are some pics @anshelsag and I took of the Vivo smartphone with the Synaptics in-display fingerprint reader. The CMOS image sensor is .7mm thick and reads the fingerprint right through the OLED display. The experience was faster than I expected. pic.twitter.com/u1NFpXtFQM
— Patrick Moorhead (@PatrickMoorhead) December 14, 2017
The in-display fingerprint sensor has been one of the most anticipated feature on phones this year, especially since phones started coming with bezel-less displays. To circumvent fingerprint authentication, OEMs like Apple have used facial recognition in the iPhone X, while Samsung shipped its flagship phones with iris scanner and a rather inconvinient physical fingerprint sensor on the back.
Earlier this year, Vivo had exhibited a prototype phone running Qualcomm's version of the technolgy at MWC Shanghai, but later abandoned it in favour of Synaptic's version. The Qualcomm powered fingerprint sensor was noticeably slow.
When we are considering "top 5" companies making phones, Vivo might not be the first company that comes to mind. But the Guandong-based company has ranked fifth in IDC's Q1 2017 report and even though it lost to Oppo and slipped down to sixth eventually, it can be argued that Vivo is still one of the top smartphone manufacturers considering both Oppo and Vivo share the same parent company, BBK Electronics. Vivo however, continues to maintain a strong hold over the Indian market with IDC ranking it as the third largest in the country in terms of market share.
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