Samsung Bringing Iris Recognition to Budget Smartphone

Samsung may be looking beyond iris recognition for its next flagship device, but it appears that the technology could soon get a bigger role in the company’s budget smartphones.

Files pertaining to the firmware of this year’s Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime Plus include an intriguing hint that the mobile device will use iris recognition for user authentication. A standard driver for the device’s LED, called “ktd2692”, has been appended with the label “ktd2692_iris”. This suggests not only that the device will feature iris recognition, but that it will be a less sophisticated version of the technology than what has been used in flagship device like the Galaxy S9, swapping infrared iris scanning with a system based on standard LED flash.

The downgrade in iris technology is a means of cost cutting for Samsung. And this appears to be something of a priority for the company, which appears to have stopped supporting its Samsung Pay digital payments platform on budget devices in a bid to keep their production costs down.

Meanwhile, Samsung is thought to be pivoting toward a biometric authentication system based on facial recognition for next year’s Galaxy S10 smartphone. If true, that would see the company once again emulating the pioneering moves of its rival Apple, which led the charge in mobile fingerprint scanning, and then dropped it in favor of 3D facial recognition for its iPhone X device. Some analysts think Samsung will go so far as ditching iris recognition altogether for the face-scanning Galaxy S10, but it looks like for now that technology will remain in Samsung’s wheelhouse for its budget devices at the very least.

Sources: Android Headlines, GSMArena