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Telecom equipment and chipset maker Qualcomm today at the Mobile World Congress (MWC), Shanghai, announced a new line of fingerprint sensors that can be used with display, metal, and glass.
These sensors pave the way for mobile companies to offer features such as fingerprint unlocking on every part of the phone. Qualcomm also claimed that it is the first commercially announced ultrasonic mobile solution to read heart beat and blood flow.
Tie-up with VivoIn fact, the chipset maker partnered with Chinese mobile company Vivo to demonstrate a line of prototype smartphones with fingerprint sensors on the screen and on the phone’s back panel, here at the MWC. The demos worked the same way that current fingerprint scanners do, except that the sensor was at the bottom the screen, instead of a dedicated button for the same.
According to Qualcomm, the ultra-sonic fingerprint sensing solution is capable of scanning through OLED displays up to 1200 micrometre. They can also scan through 525 micrometre of aluminium and 800 micrometre of cover glass, the company said. These sensors are also capable of matching fingerprints underwater. The glass and metal fingerprint sensors will be compatible with the Snapdragon 600 and 630 mobile platforms and are likely to feature in commercial devices in 2018.
New mobile platformThe company also announced its new Snapdragon 450 mobile platform, intended to power mid-range smartphones and tablets. Qualcomm claimed that the new platform delivers a 25 per cent increase in performance and graphics when compared to the Snapdragon 435. The platform features an octa-core ARM Cortex A53 CPU and Adreno 506 GPU.
The 450 also supports live Bokeh effects for cameras, and is designed to support a 13MP plus 13MP dual camera, thus possibly bringing better camera features to mid-range smartphones.
“With the Snapdragon 450, users are going to see a dramatically improved level of performance, connectivity, battery life and imaging performance,” said Kedar Kondap, vice-president, product management, Qualcomm Technologies.
Another launch was its Snapdragon Wear 1200 Platform for wearables. This platform brings LTE to wearables and also features hardware-based security. The Wear 1200 platform started shipping today.
The writer is in Shanghai at the invitation of the GSMA
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