Apple’s enhanced touch ID fingerprint recognition patent leaked, expected to come with iPhone

Apple is improving the Touch ID fingerprint scanning technology under the unused display. Earlier news stated that Touch ID will return to the iPhone.

The patent application has been submitted to the United States Patent and Trademark Office under the title ‘Under-display fingerprint sensing based on off-axis angular light’ and explains how to make the under-display fingerprint scanner more accurate and reliable.

Apple describes its technology as an ‘enhanced under-display fingerprint sensor’ system. Unlike many other existing under-display fingerprint scanners used on Android devices, it uses ‘off-axis angular light’ to read more efficiently.

Fingerprints without increasing the size of the components. Most fingerprint scanning systems under optical displays use the light emitted by the device display to illuminate the user’s fingertips.

This light reflects off the fingerprint and back through the tiny openings between the pixels of the display. Then, the sensor under the display can read the fingerprint and authenticate the user.

Due to the ‘low luminous flux and diffraction’ caused by the display stack, fingerprint images are prone to problems of low contrast and low signal-to-noise ratio, which makes it more difficult to read fingerprints and may increase the time to verify the user’s identity.

To overcome this problem, Apple proposed a system to capture off-axis angular light from the finger through a series of “angle-dependent filtering options between the display and the sensor’. Apple said this approach could ‘increase the contrast of the fingerprint mark and maintain the compact size of the entire sensor system’.

The patent description shows that OLED is the preferred display technology for the system, and the entire iPhone 12 series currently uses OLED display technology. It has long been reported that Apple will bring Touch ID under the display to the iPhone, so the patent application may indicate that the technology is advancing behind the scenes.

According to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple intends to carry the in-screen fingerprint function on at least one high-end iPhone in 2023, but Barclays analysts recently stated that the feature is ‘probably’ coming on the iPhone 13 as early as this year.

(Via)