Japan has always been a wondrous world of firsts for technology, and while more recently the software side of things has come from the West, this hasn’t stopped the Japanese from innovating on the hardware front. Not to mention, the smartphones sold in Japan are just downright cool, which might have something to do with the fact that they look like something just out of a hit Anime show. With colorful and angular designs that you won’t find elsewhere, the smartphone industry in Japan has steadily led the pack with interesting new technologies. A couple of years ago there was a smartphone launched in Japan that came with liquid cooling to keep a Snapdragon 600 CPU nice and cool to the touch and now, Fujitsu is first to market with an Iris Scanner. The Fujitsu Arrows NX F-04G is, for all intents and purposes, just another Snapdragon 810 smartphone, aside from the biometric magic on offer.
Under-the-hood is an octa-core Snapdragon 810 (sadly, this one isn’t liquid cooled) with 3GB of RAM, a 3,12o mAh battery and a 21-megapixel Sony camera. So, like we said, a pretty normal Snapdragon 810 smartphone then. Aside from what Fujitsu is calling the Iris Passport, which uses an Iris Scanner to determine whether or not it’s really you, and they say that it’s so good that it can even distinguish between twins. It takes a little longer than otherwise to unlock the device, but gone are the days of waiting with something like Face Unlock from the Galaxy Nexus and Ice Cream Sandwich. Fujitsu have made the Iris Passport feature available for many apps on the device, allowing users to lock away files and folders behind a wall only unlocked with your own eye.
It’s a nice idea, and one that probably won’t catch on any time soon, and as many of you have already guessed there are no plans to bring this guy outside of Japan, so the catchily named Arrows NX F-04G is staying in Japan. Never mind all that though, it’s encouraging to see that Fujitsu have found a proper way of putting together an Iris Scanner in a smartphone ready for market in 2015, and while it will be expensive at something like $700 – $800 in Japan, it shows promise for future devices.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LLTTC5KhwY