Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “In-Glass Fingerprint Sensor: Testing the limits!”.
Hey what is up guys mkbhd here so earlier in the year you might remember, we did a video on that in glass, fingerprint reader. You know all these bezel-less phones are coming out now, there’s no room on the front for a fingerprint reader. Unless you put it underneath the glass, so we got to see a demo of it in action in an unreleased vivo phone. Well today, of course, now we have that phone. It’S here, it’s in the studio, it’s the vivo x21 and it’s out now it exists.
Snapdragon 660, six gigs of ram 3200 milliamp hour battery and a 6.3 inch 1080p oled display with, of course, the optical fingerprint sensor, underneath so now that we have it in the flesh. It kind of feels like we have no choice but to uh test the limits of it or push it to the limit. So, okay, quick refresher on how this works, you can watch the entire original video for the full rundown. But basically, this is a small optical sensor, underneath the glass of an oled display and the sensor itself is really small. It’S maybe the size of a fingernail and when we say optical sensor we literally mean it’s the oled shining up, light to reflect off of your finger and the sensor reading the reflection of your finger to see the fingerprint. So naturally, there are a couple possible limitations to this, just because of how the technology works that we can think of.
But you know there’s limitations with touch id too. But if we’re going to see this in the future of smartphones, you know on a possible future iphone or a samsung phone down the road. Then it’s worth exploring now. So i have my fingerprint registered here. My right thumb and i’ll go ahead and register. My left thumb as well, so you can see how it works, but it’s pretty similar to any other fingerprint reader like touch id you press down over and over again, and it gets multiple reads of the same finger.
It’S a little slower and more deliberate right now, but it learns it, it saves it and then you do the edges too, so you’re, nice and thorough, and that’s it so now it has two fingers: it’s got the right thumb, that’s fingerprint number one and the left Is fingerprint two, so obviously a fingerprint reader doesn’t work when your fingers are covered like with a glove on or something like that, but what, if your finger’s just slightly covered, so all right without water on my hands? It works perfectly, but we’ve all been sweaty or been in the rain for a minute or had our hands wet and we go to unlock our phone and it can get interesting here. It’S not rejecting me. It’S just having a hard time. Reading my finger.
It’S saying you know press deeper, it’s not getting a very good read. I’M actually not surprised, though, like if i bring out the iphone 8 here with touch id you’re gon na see the same thing. Actually, it works perfectly right now, but if i get a little water on my hand here, it doesn’t work as well, so there’s no real advantage or disadvantage with water here, but being underneath the display glass, i’m sure, doesn’t help anything water has always been a nemesis Of displays, but you’re gon na have to wipe your finger and get it a little more dry and then it’ll go through no problem all right. Here’S a little bit of a spicier test, so let’s say you’re eating some hot wings, maybe you’re, maybe you’re at lunch. With someone – and you want to answer your phone, you get a phone call, but you don’t have time to wipe your fingers, but you still got to unlock now. I would guess that this would also not work basically for the same reason that water doesn’t work, but also because, if your finger is dirty in any way the sauce or the dirt or whatever it is. That’S on your hand, it’ll kind of fill in the gaps in your fingerprint and it’ll, look different to the optical sensor and sure enough.
Saucy fingers do not work i’ll, try it on the iphone as well for good measure, but yeah. As you can see, it doesn’t go through phones, just don’t like saucy fingers and this new underglass fingerprint reader. Uh won’t get you out of this one.
But we have another idea, which was it’s just dusty fingers. So we got the sun chips out and basically i’m gon na i’m gon na get enough dust on my fingers to like when you’re getting to the end of the bag. We’Ve all been there uh, let’s see how it holds up so the in-glass fingerprint reader. It’S not seeing me, okay, so that’s a negative and if i try touch id actually touch id on the iphone does unlock wow. So okay touch id, saw enough info on that first swipe to verify it’s my fingerprint, but the underglass vivo didn’t uh, but then actually, after a couple more tries, it does work.
So another question that actually came up in the comments of the first video is screen protector. Will an in-glass fingerprint reader work with a screen protector on your phone? Well, i can already actually answer that. Yes – and i know that because actually i have two of these and they come in the box with the screen protector on by default, it’s a standard fingerprint reader cuts around the notch and everything you can see that right.
So that goes over the glass. It doesn’t affect the optical sensor because it can still see through that fingerprint reader, no problem, it doesn’t obscure the optics in any way. But that got me, of course, thinking about other screen protectors. You can get all types of other screen protectors.
You can get tempered glass screen protectors, i’m sure we’ve all seen those and the final level, which is the glass privacy shield. So it’s basically polarized, so you can’t view it off axis. It’S one of those maximum security screen protectors.
So let’s try the regular glass first. It is still clear and i’m going to go ahead and put it right over the sensor. Obviously this phone is brand new.
It just came out, so i’m pretty sure there are no glass screen protectors made for it, but this one just has cutouts for an iphone, but there you go completely covered no bubbles or anything and if we give it a shot, that is success. Okay, so no hesitation there, that was pretty much exactly the same as if it didn’t have a screen protector on confirmed. You can use a tempered glass screen protector with this reader, the privacy shield, though it’s getting pretty intense but believe it or not as much as i hate them. A lot of people use these on the daily.
You know got to keep that person behind you on the train from being able to read your messages. So there you go fully protected, but does your in-glass fingerprint reader still work? Yes, it does wow. I was actually gon na. I probably would have bet against that. Uh, the privacy shield really messes with the optics. If you even try to look through one, it gets really funky, but apparently that’s no problem, so very cool good to know that the future of smartphones should have no problem with this all right. So how many people do you know with uh with those shattered screen protectors that they just leave on their phones? So, just like that, i’m gon na leave this shattered screen protector on this phone with the cracks going up over the fingerprint sensor. I mean that’s kind of how it would crack it’s from the corner and we’ll give that a shot.
Wow, no problem. It felt actually felt a little slower that time, but it definitely worked. Yeah really slow. But success is success, so you can’t always take the screen protector off and get a new one immediately, but if you’re the type of person to leave it on, you can do that and get a new one later.
So that just leaves us with my final experiment, which is simulated, extreme, wear and tear you see, micro, scratches these things happen right. You take this thing in and out of your pocket hundreds of times a week, maybe even hundreds of times a day, there’s gon na be wear and tear. There’S gon na be little things in your pocket. Little abrasions from the particles around you, it’s unavoidable. It’S painful to make them by myself on purpose with a box cutter, but it’s every phone i’ve ever had has gotten these scratches on the screen. So here’s where we’re at and if we give that a shot, no problem right, the knife is a little harder and the scratches are a little more real. This might be more like a year of wear and tear like a year later type of scenario. If you take pretty good care of your phone, but still no problem, you’re, probably noticing this whole time that the reader isn’t quite as fast as touch id. That’S for sure, it’s still just where the technology is right. Now, no doubt it’s gon na be getting faster with time like touch id, did all right, uh, let’s accelerate this like way faster cover your eyes, kids man. I hate doing this, but for science, that’s what it looks like and the reader still works a little more. A little more that’s uh, that’s pretty good! Look at how scratched up this glass is right.
Now i think it’s safe to say if your phone ever gets this scratched up and your fingerprint reader still works, then you’re, probably good for a long time like if your screen ever looks like this you’re, probably in the market for a new phone anyway, i got Ta say that’s some pretty solid results with everything we just threw at it, nothing exceedingly great or way better, but also nothing exceedingly bad. It’S kind of in this like middle ground, but that has me pretty pumped about it for its development in the future of smartphones, see if you remember the first generation of fingerprint readers and smartphones, the first gen touch id. It wasn’t that great. But it’s it’s had time to develop and turn into the gold standard that it is now for both speed and accuracy, and i kind of see that for the future of this, if this gets worked on from all angles by a bunch of different companies, i could Eventually see this finding its way into a future iphone a future samsung phone and maybe even flagships in the next couple years.
So that’s pretty exciting, but until then thanks for watching talk to you in the next one, peace .