BOE to supply OLED screens with ultrasonic fingerprint scanners – Computer – News

Screen maker BOE will supply OLED screens for smartphones with the ultrasonic 3D Sonic fingerprint scanner from Qualcomm. Until now, that scanner was only in Samsung models with screens from that manufacturer.

The first smartphones with BOE screens and Qualcomm scanners should be released before the end of the year, Qualcomm reports. BOE has long supplied screens behind which manufacturers can place optical fingerprint scanners. These are included in Huawei smartphones with BOE screens.

Ultrasonic scanners work with ultrasound, which bounces off the fingertip to be able to read the fingerprint. The alternative is optical scanners, cameras that detect the fingerprint in 2d by taking images when a small part of the screen lights up to show the fingertip to the camera.

Samsung uses the ultrasonic scanners in the Galaxy S10, Note 10 and S20, but in many cheaper phones, the manufacturer uses optical scanners. It is unknown whether the BOE screens with ultrasonic scanners will be cheaper to produce.

An ultrasonic scanner can make a 3D image and is therefore potentially safer than the optical scanner with a 2D image from a fingertip, but on the S10, a software bug was found to cause the scanner to accept every finger. That mistake has since been fixed.