2017 has been immense design overhaul for the smartphone industry. Ever since the Mi MiX debuted back in October 2016, almost every major Android OEM has jumped aboard onto then bezel-less bandwagon. With LG and Samsung among the first major brands featuring their’s new bezel-less design, it was certain that this is what consumers wanted.
While Xiaomi wasn’t the first Android phone to bring a bezel-less design to life, it certainly rolled the snowball down the hill. Now that we’re putting an end to 2017’s last quarter, we’ve seen high-end smartphones and low-end smartphone bringing their bezel-less designs to the market.
Since everyone is simply hopping aboard onto the bandwagon, there’s a number of concerns and challenges that have arrived onto the scene, especially considering how well fingerprint sensors were adopted by Android OEMs. While Apple has gone away with FaceID, Android users still love their fingerprint sensors. Not only is it convenient, but its also far more reliable compared to a camera-based biometric.
With the issue arising, it has took more than a year for a real solution and concept to come to life as Synaptics has revealed some excellent news for everyone. Synaptics has developed a way of capturing fingerprint data from the display. According to report by The Verge, fingerprint sensors could now be embedded under the display.
Synaptics has announced that the production of their FS9500 Clear ID is in top gear and would be supplied to the top 5 Android OEMs, which could most probably be Xiaomi, Samsung, Oppo, Huawei and a number of other brands.
If this goes out well, it seems like we could be being truly bezel-less smartphones in the near future. And especially considering how much Samsung and its Chinese competitors hop aboard onto new tech, the future for Android smartphones is bright indeed.
