Although fingerprint recognition has been around for a long time, the perfect integration with smartphones still has to start with the iPhone’s touch ID, which is less than two years ago; and within two years, many Android phones have The fingerprint recognition function is used; as for its future development, it is even more worth looking forward to. On May 21, Wu Dezhou, vice president of Huawei Honor, hinted in an interview that full network connectivity and fingerprint recognition will become standard on future thousand-yuan phones; in addition, as the Google I/O conference approaches, there is news that the next-generation Android operating system Android M may Will natively support fingerprint recognition.
These all make us think about the topic of mobile phone fingerprint recognition: If billions of Android phones around the world can use fingerprint recognition in the future, this can really be regarded as another milestone in the history of mobile phone development. . But having said that, the realization and even popularization of fingerprint recognition actually depends on the development and progress of technology; and there is still more way to go for technology to reach the hands of ordinary consumers from the laboratory.
However, as Li Ning’s advertising slogan says: everything is possible. Although fingerprint recognition has been around for a long time, its true integration with smartphones has only been less than two years since the touch ID of the iPhone. Within two years, many Android phones have used the fingerprint recognition function. ; As for its future development, it is even more worth looking forward to.
The entanglement between the Home button and Android phones
Apple has always been good at leading the trend of smartphones, both technically and aesthetically; although Motorola launched it as early as 2011 The fingerprint recognition smartphone ATRIX was introduced, but it was only with the iPhone's Touch ID that the concept of fingerprint recognition became known to everyone, and major Android manufacturers followed suit and began to use fingerprint recognition technology on their own mobile phones.
However, if we put aside the technical principles, patents and market factors behind fingerprint recognition for the time being, and examine it from the standpoint of what consumers can intuitively perceive, we will find that in terms of fingerprint recognition, the Home sensor used by the iPhone The push button solution itself is fundamentally different from Android phones.
From the perspective of the ease of use and convenience of fingerprint recognition, the Touch ID front button pressing scheme used by the iPhone can be said to be the best choice. However, the provider of the solution used by the iPhone is AuthenTec, a company that Apple has acquired; AuthenTec is the world's leading provider of fingerprint authentication sensors and solutions for the PC, wireless device and access control markets. After being acquired by Apple, it can only serve Apple.
Of course, in addition to AuthenTec, there are other providers - such as domestic Goodix - that can also provide similar solutions, but they started relatively late and are relatively immature, and for As far as Android phones are concerned, there is one less choice among the already handful of fingerprint identification solution providers.
In addition, this solution has a basic requirement for the appearance design of the mobile phone, which is to have a pressable Home button on the front; on the one hand, there are technical reasons for the existence of this Home button. To put it simply, it can Through this button, the finger is precisely focused to improve the signal-to-noise ratio; on the other hand, the sensor is triggered by the pressing action to light up the screen, thereby forming a suitable operating mechanism for the user.
The iPhone is born with a perfectly round Home button on the front. Although it is recessed and has simple functions at the beginning, it seems that Apple has long expected that Touch ID will be used one day. Once the technology When it matures, it immediately integrated the fingerprint recognition function into the Home button, thereby fully retaining the consistency of the iPhone's design while adding new technology.
In contrast, Android phones that are eager to add fingerprint recognition are not so lucky; because Google uses virtual buttons in versions after Android 4.0, many Android phones do not have a Home entity on the front. Buttons, so it is impossible to follow the iPhone to directly adopt the fingerprint recognition solution of front button pressing. Therefore, in terms of realizing the fingerprint recognition function, Android phones are destined to follow the same path as the iPhone.
Compromises and Attacks of the Android Camp
The iPhone’s Touch ID has exemplary significance on two levels: one is WHAT, that is, the use of fingerprint recognition on smartphones itself; One is HOW, that is, how to implement fingerprint recognition on smartphones. The former has been generally accepted by Android mobile phone manufacturers, and everyone wants to use fingerprint recognition on their own mobile phones. But as for how to achieve it, some have chosen to overcome various difficulties and move closer to the IPhone, such as Samsung and Meizu; others have decided to find another way and use different fingerprint recognition solutions, such as Huawei and ZTE. Let’s take the following mobile phones from Android manufacturers as examples to illustrate this problem.
Samsung: One of the most basic features of Samsung’s Galaxy series mobile phones is the long and flat Home button under the front; however, due to its shape and size, this button is not large enough to cover the fingerprint sensor. . Therefore, on the two models S5 and note 4 launched in 2014, Samsung did not adopt the iPhone-style Home push button, but adopted Synaptics & Validity’s sliding solution. However, sliding fingerprint recognition must slide from top to bottom. When your finger passes across the sensor, the finger will be scanned line by line. This requires you to have a fixed posture, fixed direction, and your finger must cover the entire Sensor before it can be recognized. These greatly reduce the user experience, making the fingerprint recognition function on these two mobile phones useless.
However, in 2015, Samsung abandoned the above-mentioned sliding fingerprint recognition solution on the S6 and S6 edge, and adopted a home button press fingerprint recognition solution similar to the iPhone. To achieve this, Samsung shortened the original long and flat Home button and increased its top and bottom width to accommodate the fingerprint sensor. Under the new fingerprint recognition solution, the fingerprint recognition efficiency of the S6 has been greatly improved, greatly enhancing the user experience; thus helping this year's S6 become a popular Android flagship phone.
Meizu: Meizu’s MX series mobile phones are not equipped with a Home button; but in order to use the front-press fingerprint recognition function, Meizu actually added a rounded rectangular Home button to the front of the MX 4 Pro ; Although this approach has been controversial, fortunately, the fingerprint recognition of this phone is quite sensitive; Meizu has also officially joined the fingerprint recognition camp.
The above two companies tried every means to adopt the Home button press recognition solution. One chose to transform the Home button, and the other chose to add a Home button out of thin air. But there are more Android phones that use virtual buttons and adopt other types of fingerprint recognition solutions.
Huawei: The Mate 7 released by Huawei in September 2014 uses the FPC1020 back touch fingerprint recognition solution from Swedish FPC Company. The biggest feature of this solution is that the sensor is placed in a specific area on the back cover of the mobile phone. The user only needs to touch the unlocking area with his finger to perform fingerprint recognition. There is no need to configure the Home button in the front opening. The advantage of this solution is that manufacturers can implement fingerprint recognition while ensuring the size of the front screen of the mobile phone and the beauty of the integrated front body. Currently OPPO N3 also adopts this fingerprint recognition solution.
ZTE: The Nubia Z9 Premium Edition released by ZTE on May 6 also uses fingerprint recognition; the difference is that the Z9 Premium Edition places the fingerprint recognition module on the button on the right border , thus realizing the three-button integration of fingerprint, volume and power; the reason why the Z9 Premium Edition is designed in this way is to maximize the visual effect brought by the bezel-less and the overall integrated effect of the mobile phone; this is better than Huawei's back touch screen Fingerprint recognition goes a step further. However, since the size of the side buttons may not necessarily cover the size of the fingerprint recognition sensor, and the real machine of the Z9 Premium Edition has not yet been launched, the actual effect of this fingerprint recognition needs to be tested.