An interesting video from inside a Foxconn facility, published Tuesday on leak aggregator SlashLeaks, appears to depict what may resemble an iPhone 8 with a rear-mounted Touch ID fingerprint sensor going through a quality control process.
Apple has “cancelled” plans to embed a Touch ID fingerprint sensor under the cover glass of iPhone 8, revered Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo wrote in a note issued to clients last weekend, a copy of which was obtained by AppleInsider.
Windows giant Microsoft today unveiled a nicely designed wireless keyboard with a built-in fingerprint sensor located between the Alt and Ctrl keys, as reported by Engadget.
Dubbed Modern Keyboard and priced at $129.99, the accessory lets users unlock their Windows 10 devices with a finger press using Windows Hello.
The dedicated Fingerprint ID key was designed to blend seamlessly so it would appear to be any other key, said Microsoft. The keyboard supports both wired connections via USB and wireless connections via the low-energy Bluetooth 4.0/4.1 standard.
Although Modern Keyboard can be paired with any device via Bluetooth, fingerprint scanning does not work on iOS and macOS due to the lack of a dedicated Secure Enclave chip.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDpGtDzAw4I
Featuring slim, low-profile design and a robust aluminum-clade frame, Modern Keyboard is “heavy and virtually indestructible”, according to Microsoft.
Like Apple's Magic Keyboard, Modern Keyboard sports a built-in rechargeable battery with up to two months on full charge and provides seamless Bluetooth paring experience, with automatic pairing when first connected to a computer via a cable.
Microsoft also unveiled a brand new mouse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eI0klTsqnA
Called Modern Mouse and priced at $49.99, it has an aluminum body and a metal scroll wheel.
The device looks visually similar to Modern Keyboard to match Microsoft's Surface styling. Unfortunately, it uses AAA batteries with up to 12 months of run time on a single charge, not a rechargeable lithium-ion battery.
Furthermore, Modern Mouse is not compatible with macOS.
Both Modern Keyboard and Modern Mouse are listed as “coming soon” on Microsoft Store.
Apple currently sells an extended keyboard with a numeric pad that can be used in either wired or wireless mode. However, the company has yet to make a standalone keyboard with a built-in Touch ID sensor.
Apple is said to have developed a next-generation Touch ID sensor where an OLED display of the device doubles as a fingerprint sensor. This should enable users to rest their finger on the display to authenticate themselves.
According to a Chinese-language Economic Daily News report, citing sources from Apple's chip supplier Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Apple has managed to develop an optical fingerprint sensor to enable authentication directly on the screen.
KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo first called it in January.
He said because Touch ID’s capacitive sensor does not work through the display’s cover glass, Apple could go with an optical sensor which doesn’t require physical contact with a user’s finger.
Other iPhone 8 features, according to a TSMC source, include no physical Home button, the screen ratio of 18.5:9 instead of the previous 16:9 and invisible infrared image sensors to enhance camera functionality and enable augmented reality features.
Apple is understood to have been plagued with yield issues regarding the new optical fingerprint sensor. It's unclear if the company has managed to resolve those technical issues.
The images of an iPhone 8 clone that hit the web yesterday give us a good indication what an iPhone 8 with a rear-mounted Touch ID sensor might look like. According to Benjamin Geskin, who tweeted out the rendered images, the device is based on an early iPhone 8 prototype.
The images were originally posted on Chinese social media platform Weibo. “All my sources said that this is totally wrong design,” Geskin cautioned, adding that iPhone 8 “is not going to look like that.”
The phone sports a slim bezels on the front face with no physical Home button.
On the back, we can clearly see a vertically stacked dual-lens camera and a Touch ID-like sensor, positioned below the Apple logo. The copycat device features an aluminum chassis.
iPhone 8, as you know, is said to feature a glass sandwich design in order to avoid any potential interference with its wireless charging components.
The placement of the fingerprint sensor on China's iPhone 8 clone actually makes sense to me: it's relatively easily reachable with one's index finger, as opposed to Galaxy S8's fingerprint sensor positioned next to the rear camera.
Some reports have suggested that one of the more than ten iPhone prototypes Apple has been testing has a rear Touch ID. Newer reports, however, have indicated that Apple has managed to integrate Touch ID into the display assembly after all.
Still, the company was smart enough to engineer an iPhone with a rear Touch ID as a fallback device, just in case.
To me, the biggest takeaway from looking at these renderings is that iPhones would look much better with some additional color options beyond the usual black, silver and gold choices.
Hong Kong-based equity research firm CLSA is saying there's a “high chance” that Apple's OLED-based iPhone 8 could come with a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor after all.
In a research note issued to clients Monday, a copy of which was obtained by MarketWatch, Pacific Crest analysts have cautioned that Apple might be having issues with iPhone 8's rumored optical fingerprint sensing functionality.
To refresh your memory quickly, the revered Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities predicted in January that iPhone 8 could adopt a new fingerprint-reading solution in the form of an optical sensor that wouldn't require physical contact with a user’s finger.
A photo that was posted to Chinese social network Weibo by an unknown user appears to depict an engineering design drawing of Apple's rumored 5.8-inch OLED iPhone, tentatively named “iPhone 8” (or “iPhone X”, “Tenth Anniversary iPhone” or simply “iPhone Edition”).
The leaked technical schematic depicts a device as thin as iPhone 7 with very slim bezels on the left and right sides of the screen, significantly smaller top and bottom bezels, a fingerprint sensor relocated to the backside, a vertically aligned dual-camera system and more.
We heard before that iPhone 8 could get delayed due to various technical issues stemming from a new augmented-reality 3D camera system, the lamination process of curved organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panels and a new thin-film 3D Touch system.
Analyst Timothy Arcuri of Cowen and Company, however, contends that iPhone 8's rumored in-screen Touch ID sensor remains its biggest bottleneck.
If you’ve ever used Apple Pay before, then you’re likely familiar with the visually-appealing Touch ID animation that appears on the Lock screen when accessing it.
Now if you've ever thought to yourself that this animation would be nice to look at when unlocking your device, then a new free jailbreak tweak called LockGlyphX by evilgoldfish is just what you've been looking for.
Rather than use one of the few readily available off-the-shelf fingerprint scanners that can be integrated into a smartphone display, Apple's iPhone 8 will sport biometric fingerprint recognition via a custom-designed sensor, also embedded into the display. In addition, according to DigiTimes' report Friday, the built-in fingerprint sensor inside iPhone 8 will replace Apple's capacitive-based Touch ID fingerprint reader, as previously rumored. The handset is expected to enter mass production in September, claimed industry sources cited in the report.
Apple has been granted yet another patent for a fingerprint reader embedded underneath the display itself, a feature widely expected to debut on iPhone 8.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) this morning awarded the iPhone maker a patent for an “electronic device including finger biometric sensor carried by a touch display and related methods”. The company first applied for this patent on January 27, 2015.