While Apple seems to favor fingerprint recognition for its flagship smartphone, your next Samsung handset could scan your eye instead of using a password. A new report from Korea suggests that we’ll see Samsung’s first smartphone with iris-scanning tech and a sharp 2560 x 1440-pixel display as soon as February.
The Galaxy smartphone maker is rumored to unveil such a device at Mobile World Congress 2014, according to ZDNet Korea. The report comes weeks after alleged benchmarks for a Samsung smartphone with the same display resolution surfaced on the GFX cross-platform benchmarking database earlier this month.
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The results indicate that this unknown device, which some reports have suggested could be the Galaxy S5, will feature a 2.5-GHz processor and Android 4.4 KitKat out of the box. However, this would fall out of Samsung’s product release cycle for its Galaxy flagships, since both the Galaxy S3 and Galaxy S4 were unveiled in the spring rather than the winter.
If the rumors hold true, Samsung’s smartphone would be the first commercially available handset to feature a 2560 x 1440 resolution display. In August, LG unveiled what could be the world’s first QHD 5.5-inch smartphone display, but the Korean manufacturer hasn’t announced plans to implement this technology into a specific smartphone.
As for Samsung’s rumored iris-scanning tech, we’re expecting to see a feature that differs from the current eye-tracking technology in the Galaxy S4. ZDNet’s report doesn’t provide details as to how it could be used in a smartphone, but a Samsung patent published in November does. The iris scanner would work in conjunction with a proximity sensor that would detect when an object is near the handset. The iris scanner would then read the user’s iris and match it with information stored on the device.
While Samsung’s product roadmap for 2014 largely remains unknown, the company provided some insight as to what technology we may see in its forthcoming devices at its recent Analyst Day. This tech is said to include 16-MP smartphone cameras with improved ISOCELL technology in 2014 and mobile devices with “folding displays” in 2015. We’ll believe it when we see it.
