Smartphone displays could have built-in fingerprint scanners fairly soon

Remember a couple of weeks ago when we showed you Apple’s patent for building TouchID into an iPhone/iPad display? It could happen sooner than you think. Apple’s idea might still be in the very early stages, but a South Korean company believes it can build fingerprint-scanning touchscreens into phones by the end of the year.

CrucialTec already has patent approval for a fingerprint scanner that is embedded as part of the smartphone’s display. This would negate the need for a separate fingerprint-scanning button which would otherwise waste valuable space on the front of the phone.

There were rumours that this sort of tech would be included in the Samsung Galaxy S6, but at this late stage that’s very unlikely. Still CrucialTec did hint that the tech could make its way to our smartphones as early as the next quarter, which would be fantastic.

Which phone it might be is completely unknown at this point in time, so we’ll just have to wait and see. Apple would be a prime candidate given the patent from earlier this month and its pioneering efforts with TouchID. Then again, any other flagship phone company is likely to want to check out the tech for themselves. I could definitely see Samsung including it in a variant of the Galaxy Note 5 just to see how a fingerprint scanning display would fare in the real world.

Don’t get too excited yet, just in case CrucialTec’s fingerprint scanning displays never actually makes it to market. We will, however, be keeping our fingers crossed.