Vivo's Under-display Fingerprint Scanner Is Slow But Will Work Under Water

Vivo has just announced a device that has under-display finger print sensor in it, beating Apple to its game and becoming the first company to launch such innovation on a smartphone. Before now, Fingerprint sensor under glass might be easy to do but under the thickness of the glass plus display, is something nobody is yet to master in a production scale.

The new generation sensor installed on Vivo prototype smartphone was been tested today by Engadget's Richard Lai who got to test it out at a trade show in Shanghai. The sensor, is the latest  ultrasonic fingerprint sensor from Qualcomm that now works through OLED display stacks up to 1.2mm thick, up to 0.8mm of cover glass, or up to 0.65mm of aluminum (an increase from 0.4mm for both glass or metal). 

Unlike other capacitive fingerprint sensors we find on phones today, the new under-display fingerprint scanner work when under water or even when your hand is greasy. But there is a rub though; after the test, here is what Lia observed:

“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.”

While Samsung failed to install the fingerprint sensor under the Galaxy S8, and Apple yet to implement theirs on the up coming all-screen tenth anniversary iPhone 8, Vivo- a Chinese company has step up their games to be the first company to break this barrier.

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If this new Qualcomm fingerprint sensor is truly slow as it were, then it will be a tradeoff for Apple's next flagship phone, either Apple offer users a slow under-display fingerprint sensor or they offer a fast sensor at the back of the device. Apple will have to make that decision, but it will be wise for Apple to listen to its user opinion to where the fingerprint scanner is to be located.

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