Apple Patent Fuels iPhone In-Display Fingerprint Sensor Rumors
With the new 16-inch MacBook Pro, Apple made some design changes to the Touch Bar portion of the laptop, where they added a physical Esc key and also separated Touch ID from the Touch Bar itself. However, one of the changes that wasn’t widely-advertised is how Touch ID on the new MacBook Pro was changed from capacitive to optical.
This has led to speculation that similar tech could eventually find its way back to the iPhone, where Apple might introduce an in-display fingerprint sensor. Now thanks to a recently-discovered patent, it has only fueled those rumors as Apple was granted a patent for an “Electronic device including sequential operation of light source subsets while acquiring biometric image data and related methods”.
The description of the patent reads (in part), “An optical image sensor is carried by the housing under the display. The optical image sensor senses biometric image data associated with a user, such as, for example, data representative of a biometric image of the fingerprint patterns of the user’s finger.”
It has been rumored for a while now that Apple could be looking to bring back Touch ID to the iPhone, and a report from earlier this month suggested that Apple could be working with Qualcomm to use its ultrasonic fingerprint reader for the 2020 iPhone. That being said, nothing has been confirmed yet so take it with a grain of salt, but the rumors and patents all seem to be pointing in that direction.
Source:Apple Patent Fuels iPhone In-Display Fingerprint Sensor Rumors
