The Galaxy Note 9 will be yet another Samsung-made flagship to miss out on an in-screen fingerprint reader, The Bell reported Tuesday, citing industry sources close to the world’s largest phone maker. While numerous insiders have been reporting Samsung will finally be able to commercialize a device with a fingerprint scanner installed beneath its display panel, the South Korean original equipment manufacturer is now said to have canceled the project due to a number of technical issues plaguing its development as it’s forced to meet tight production deadlines designed to ensure the smartphone is ready to be commercialized in late summer or early fall, presumably around the time IFA 2018 takes place in Berlin, Germany.
The Seoul-based tech giant enlisted the help of multiple component suppliers and tech companies in its quest to implement an under-display fingerprint reader but none of its partnerships yielded any significant results, sources claim, directly contradicting recent reports suggesting Samsung has not only managed to develop such a commercially viable solution but succeeded in doing so without relying on external partners. The Bell claims the Galaxy Note 9 will now debut with a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor and feature a largely bezel-free design, thus being visually similar to the Galaxy S8, Galaxy Note 8, and the upcoming Galaxy S9 lineup of Android flagships. The insiders cited by the report are suggesting Samsung is still struggling with delivering an accurate authentication solution that can operate beneath a mobile display module and hasn’t been satisfied with the technologies from Synaptics, LSI, EJS Tech, Qualcomm, and Beyond Eyes that it has supposedly been testing for years now.
The industry’s first handset with an in-display fingerprint reader has been announced earlier this year in the form of the Vivo X20 Plus UD, though that particular model is unlikely to be widely available outside of China. Sources are now speculating that Samsung may be able to integrate such a technology into the Galaxy S10 expected to be announced in early 2019, with previous rumors suggesting the company may also be planning to rebrand the series as “Galaxy X.” The South Korean OEM has reportedly been trying to commercialize both optical and in-display fingerprint sensors for years now, with its initial plan being to implement such a technology into the 2017 Galaxy S8 series, according to previous rumors.