HOMTOM Announces Iris Scanning Smartphone

China-based smartphone maker HOMTOM has announced a new flagship device featuring advanced iris scanning technology. Called the HT10, the smartphone will be demonstrated at this year’s Global Source Exhibition at AsiaWorld Expo in October.

HOMTOM says the device offers 4G connectivity across every continent (except, presumably, Antarctica), and that the smartphone also features a 21MP rear camera and an 8MP front-facing camera. Most notably, the company says it will sport an iris scanner – “the same as used in the Samsung Note 7”, according to a statement.

That would make HOMTOM once of the first lower-tier smartphone OEMs to emulate Samsung’s pioneering approach to iris biometrics. While Samsung certainly isn’t the first company to offer an iris-scanning smartphone, it is perhaps the most high-profile one to do so, and HOMTOM’s move to follow suit may be a sign that mobile iris scanning is set to take off the way fingerprint scanning did after Apple incorporated the feature into its line of iPhone devices.

Oddly, in its statement HOMTOM also asserted that its HT10’s iris scanning feature works “even when the user is wearing glasses” – a capability lacking in the Note7, which suggests that the biometric technology being used may not, in fact, be the exact same as that featured in Samsung’s device.