Qualcomm Demonstrates Under-display Finger Print Reader At MWC Shanghai

At the ongoing Mobile World Congress in Shanghai, Qualcomm is showing off one of its latest wares: under-display finger print readers. A current smartphone trend has seen vendors focus a lot on edge-to-edge screens, which has relegated the finger print reader to the back of the device. Personally, I don’t like this location; I prefer simply laying my thumb on the front home button, and I’m willing to have that extra slack for that ability even if it ruins the goal of an edge-to-edge screen.

Under-display finger print readers can help, as phones could still be edge-to-edge but retain the reader in the usual spot (or perhaps a little higher, since it doesn’t need to be at the absolute bottom of the front).

Qualcomm’s latest solution supports sitting under displays that are 1.2mm thick, which would be protected by glass no thicker than 0.8mm. It can even sit under 0.65mm of aluminum. But how well does it actually work?

According to Engadget, it works well, but not that well, at least in terms of performance. Writes Richard Lai: “I found the fingerprint recognition speed to be noticeably slower — about one second between first touch and entering home screen — than the near-instantaneous unlock that I’m used to on most recent smartphones.”

A one-second unlock time might be a deal-breaker for some (it is for me, admittedly; but again, I don’t care about edge-to-edge more than having a fast finger print reader in the front), but as with all technology, these solutions will continue to be improved. Qualcomm isn’t without competition, as Synaptics has been hard at work on its own solution. We at least have these solutions to look forward to in the future, because I could sure get behind an edge-to-edge screen with hidden finger print reader that’s just as fast as the fastest ones on the market today.