The world is about to get its first iris-scanning smartphone, according to a Computerworld article by Tim Hornyak. Called the Arrows NX F-04G, the smartphone comes from Japanese mobile provider NTT DoCoMo, and will go on sale in Japan at the end of the month.
Its built-in biometric system can scan an iris within a couple of seconds, and is intended to be used to authenticate the user for phone unlocking, mobile payment authorization, and so on. It adheres to FIDO specifications, and the user’s biometric data is stored on the device itself.
Beyond the iris-scanning functionality, the Arrows NX F-04G is a pretty standard Android smartphone, sporting a 5.2-inch display, a 21.5-megapixel camera (along with a secondary 2.4-megapixel camera), and NFC functionality.
Fujitsu, which made the iris-scanning technology used in the device, says its error rate is only one in 100,000, making it highly accurate. Nevertheless, like facial recognition systems and fingerprint-scanning systems, an iris-scanning system is hypothetically susceptible to spoofing. That may not matter all that much in the case of the Arrows NX F-04G, given the convenience its system offers, but future iterations could implement a huge security boost by implementing multi-factor authentication.
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