Honor 10 sports the second-generation ultrasonic under-glass fingerprint scanner. Here’s how it works.
Honor 10 has been made official, taking place as the company’s newest mid-range flagship of 2018. From the design to cameras, Honor 10 manages to stand out from the crowd. But one thing that truly makes the handset unique is the presence of an under-glass fingerprint sensor. Instead of being present on the rear or embedded right into the home button on the front of the phone, it now sits on the bottom bezel, but under the glass. This is the first time this type of solution has been made available on a mass-market device like the Honor 10 smartphone.
“We and Qualcomm worked together on an ultrasonic under-glass fingerprint sensor”, George Zhao, President of Honor, told Indianexpress.com on the sidelines of the launch of the Honor 10 here in London. “This is the new-generation of ultrasonic under glass fingerprint sensor”, he said.
Zhao said the first-generation of ultrasonic under glass fingerprint scanner was not good; it had a lot of sensitivity issues and hence the reason why they never incorporated the solution into their phones. “We did a lot of tests internally, but the results were not as good as we initially hoped. So we finally decided not to choose the solution,” he explained. Xiaomi’s Mi 5s was the first smartphone in the market to use Qualcomm’s ultrasonic-based fingerprint sensor technology, though the device was limited to the Chinese market. Honor 10 is being introduce globally, including in India and Europe.
Honor claims the second-generation ultrasonic under-glass fingerprint scanner is more precise and that it should do a decent job in recognising wet fingers. To make sure an ultrasonic under-glass fingerprint scanner works fine on the Honor 10, Zhao said the company spent a long time to fine tune the experience.
Such technology is more difficult to implement, plus an under-glass fingerprint sensor is also more expensive than a regular fingerprint scanner you will see on most modern smartphones. Though the solution is not the same as the in-display fingerprint sensor that can be seen on Vivo’s X21UD and Huawei’s own Porsche Design Mate RS.
Honor claims the second-generation ultrasonic under-glass fingerprint scanner is more precise and that it should do a decent job in recognising wet fingers.
Asked the reason why the company went for an under-glass fingerprint scanner, instead of the in-display fingerprint sensor, Zhao said,”Today, for the in-screen fingerprint sensor, the sensitivity is pretty low. That’s probably the reason why we choose an ultrasonic under-glass fingerprint scanner over the in-display fingerprint sensor.” The phone also features facial recognition technology to unlock the device, in case if the fingerprint scanner doesn’t work. The Honor 10 is already available in India, and costs Rs 32,999.
Disclaimer: The correspondent is in London, attending the launch of Honor 10 at the invite of Honor India