Qualcomm’s new ultrasonic fingerprint reader offers 50% faster speed

Aside from the larger surface area, the new sensor is claimed to process fingerprints 50% faster than the previous generation.

Qualcomm says it expects the new generation of 3D Sonic Sensor to start appearing in high-end Android flagships as soon as the first half of 2021, The Verge reported on Monday.

A tweet by reliable Samsung leaker Ice Universe, however, suggests that it may very well be coming to Samsung's latest handset.

Today, Qualcomm announces its second-generation in-display fingerprint sensor called its 3D Sonic Gen 2. Thanks to its larger size and faster processing, Qualcomm's 3D Sonic Sensor Gen 2 can unlock smartphones quicker than the previous generation. Samsung skipped Qualcomm's second product, the big 20-by-30-millimeter (0.79-by-1.18-inch) 3D Sonic Max. Ultrasonic scanners, from Qualcomm, are in Samsung devices. Perhaps Samsung may use this new in-display sensor on the incoming Galaxy S21 series, expected to debut in less than one week. That means that it provides a larger region for users to place their fingers and allows the sensor to capture 1.7x more biometric data. Qualcomm says its ultrasonic scanners are more secure and more accurate, but fingerprint sensing is a complex combination of software and hardware, so it's been hard to show that in final consumer products.