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LG's New Fingerprint Sensor Doesn't Need A Button (mashable.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Mashable: LG Innotek has developed a fingerprint sensor that's placed under a glass surface instead of in a physical button, the company announced Sunday. The new sensor could lead to smartphones that you can unlock by placing your finger on the phone screen. The LG-owned electronics parts manufacturer achieved this by cutting out a 0.01-inch thick slot in the lower part of a smartphone's cover glass, and then inserting a very thin fingerprint sensor into it. In other words, the sensor is still under the cover glass, but the slot moves the sensor close enough to the surface to read a fingerprint. That way, the sensor is protected from water and scratches, and can be installed anywhere under the phone's glass surface.
Now you can put sensors under any and all glass surface where random passers-by will put their fingers and safely and securely read their fingerprints, whether they like^Wknow it or not. Didn't we predict that fingerprints are the safest and securest passwords ever? I think this pretty well clinches it, don't you?
Just shows most people are fashion-tards that buy based on image rather than technical capability. I hate when I have my employer's on-call phone every six weeks, that stupid iphone is much thicker than my android, not to mention longer for same sized screen.
And the reason to have a fingerprint sensor is the fact that a majority of smartphone users have no passcode or other security measure set. The reason is simple - a phone is accessed extremely often - I believe Apple quotes easily a thousand times or more a day. When you're using it that often (most of the time it's used for under 5 seconds), a passcode gets in the way - who wants to enter a passcode that many times? End result, they don't secure their phone at all.
The fingerprint sensor lets a user choose a passcode and access their phone without taking significantly longer (it would suck if it took longer to enter your passcode than you were going to use it). So while the OS is resuming from low power state the sensor can be reading the fingerprint and the secure enclave can determine if it's a valid fingerprint, so when the OS is ready the decision is ready.
Of course, Apple also has ways to ensure that the fingerprint is overridable - three bad reads triggers a passcode, a power cycle triggers a passcode and no unlocking for 48 hours also triggers a passcode request.
The law is currently unclear as to what happens when this is triggered.- if you are forced to unlock the phone by fingerprint, but the phone now requires the passcode...