This patent surfaced on the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO), and was spotted by Letsgodigital. It was submitted back on March 31, but it was published on October 7.
Samsung may use a dual-sided fingerprint scanner in the Galaxy Z Fold 4
This fingerprint scanner seems like it’s made for foldable devices. Samsung seemingly figured out a way to include one fingerprint scanner, that will double as two of them, basically. This way, an under-display fingerprint scanner would be usable on both the main display, and the cover display on the outside. The company placed a small printed circuit board (PCB) between the sensors, which is connected to the main printed circuit board.
Now, there is no guarantee that this fingerprint scanner will make it to the Galaxy Z Fold 4. That’s just a wild guess, though. As we’re still far away from that launch, so Samsung may have enough time to implement it. If not, the Galaxy Z Fold 5 could feature it, but it would be nice to see it in the Galaxy Z Fold 4, that’s for sure. The Galaxy Z Fold 3 does have a fingerprint scanner, but it’s a side-facing one.
Many people still prefer capacitive fingerprint scanners
There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, many people still prefer capacitive fingerprint scanners. This was arguably the best solution that Samsung could have come up with. Under-display fingerprint scanners have been around for quite some time now, and they do work really well. Ironically, ultrasonic under-display fingerprint scanners do tend to offer worse performance, and those are the ones that Samsung is using in its flagships. Even though ultrasonic fingerprint scanners are technically more secure, proper optical under-display fingerprint scanners do offer better performance overall. It remains to be seen how good will Samsung’s new implementation be.
