Jan 14: With the move to edge-to-edge screens and narrower bezels, there's just no room to put a fingerprint sensor on the front of a phone anymore. Phone makers have moved them to the side or back, or removed them entirely.
But things don't have to be this way. At CES 2018, Chinese phone maker Vivo showed off the world's first phone with a fingerprint sensor embedded underneath the touchscreen.
OPPO patents in-display fingerprint sensor
Vivo's been working on putting a fingerprint sensor underneath the screen for the last couple of years, and now it's finally made one that's ready for production.
The company had already announced last year it had developed the "in-display fingerprint scanning" technology for a prototype phone. That version used an ultra-sonic sensor and was created with support from Qualcomm.
The new version of the finger-scanning tech is optical-based and was developed with Synaptics. In a nutshell, how the technology works is the phone's OLED display panel emits light to illuminate your fingerprint. Your lit-up fingerprint is then reflected into an in-display fingerprint sensor and authenticated.
