A months ago, Chinese smartphone manufacturer launched its latest flagship smartphone named OnePlus 6T, which is the successor of the OnePlus 6 launched a few months before 6T’s launch.
One of the major highlights of the smartphone is that it comes with an in-display fingerprint sensor, making it the first smartphone from OnePlus to have this feature. According to the company, it can unlock the phone in just 0.34 seconds.
Pete Lau, co-founder of OnePlus had said that the company was testing the use of in-display fingerprint sensor since the OnePlus 5T but didn’t use it until OP6T because “the technology wasn’t up to the standards of speed and reliability” of OnePlus.
Explaining the usage of the in-display fingerprint sensor, the company says that when a user places their finger on the sensor, it sends out light to illuminate the finger, allowing the sensor to “see” the user’s fingerprint. During the testing stage, the company discovered that green light gives the best results and that’s why they went for green color.
Apart from the high-tech sensor, OnePlus says that it also uses sophisticated algorithms to improve over time as they learn more about the way users unlock phones. Yale Liu, a software engineer at OnePlus says that every time a user unlocks the phone, the sensor also records areas of the finger that weren’t registered in the initial fingerprint setup stage.
The data is then added to the existing data, making it more complete. So, every time the in-display fingerprint sensor is used, it gathers more data about the user’s fingerprint. This means that over time, the phone will unlock even faster. He further adds that the algorithms are also able to figure out when the user’s fingerprint is different than usual – if their finger is wet or if they have a cut on it, etc.