Fingerprint scanning is not new technology, it has been in electronics for years and available to the public. Apple and Samsung though were some of the first to really come close to perfecting it in the use of smartphones. I say “close to” because neither has really perfected it and both companies implementations can still stand to use some improvements, but this is mostly true of any electronic hardware. Both OEMs have done a great job however and the implementations being well received by consumers may have pushed companies like Samsung to look into further development of finger print scanners in their future products. While we can sit and debate the practical nature of having such a feature on our devices today the fact remains that it is becoming a way for us to interact with our devices for security purposes, but how secure is a conversation for another time.
One area that we have yet to see fingerprint scanning make its debut is with the wearables market, but even that may soon be familiar territory for the technology. According to the CEO of Synaptics, who is the company behind the fingerprint scanning tech within Samsung’s latest flagship the Galaxy S5, says that we just might see fingerprint scanners inside of wearables within the next year. That statement might mean within a literal year from now or it could mean simply by 2015. Whatever the case, it sounds like Samsung might be developing one of their future wearables with this technology inside.
Another interesting bit of information that Synaptics CEO Rick Bergman unveiled is that the company is working to develop area-based fingerprint scanning technology for the second half of this year. This doesn’t exactly mean that the Galaxy Note 4 will have an area-based fingerprint scanner baked in(giving the tech in Samsung devices a change of pace since the S5 currently uses a swipe function to interact with it)but it’s a small indicator that it is a possibility. Both potential developments for the technology are equally interesting and it could open up the door for this type of functionality in more devices down the road. I personally would love to see a fingerprint scanner on a future smartwatch.