Samsung Galaxy S9 to Take on iPhone X's Face ID with Enhanced Iris Scanner: Report

While hackers are exploring ways to fool the technology behind Apple's Face ID, Samsung is now rumoured to be working on an enhanced iris scanner to take on the iPhone X's killer feature. The new development is reportedly in works for the Galaxy S9 that would supersede the existing Galaxy S8.

ET News reports that Samsung is developing new software to make face recognition on the Galaxy S9 speedier than its predecessor. The South Korean company is reportedly not favouring any hardware upgrade, and the basic specifications as well as the structure of the Galaxy S8 will be followed on the next Galaxy flagship. However, software tweaks are said to be in the pipeline to reduce the delay in recognising the face and scanning the iris of users.

Just like the Galaxy S8, the Galaxy S9 is rumoured to have an 8-megapixel front camera sensor with an autofocus lens. This suggests that the new Samsung handset would have something similar to the TrueDepth system that exists on the iPhone X to enable the next level of facial recognition. Apple's technology projects more than 30,000 infrared dots onto user's face to produce a 3D facial map and ultimately unlock the device upon authenticating access.

Google had brought its native software-based facial recognition to Android back in 2011 that enabled Face Unlock across various Ice Cream Sandwich-based handsets. However, Samsung lately developed its proprietary experience and added face unlocking support to the Galaxy Note 7 back in August last year.

Some previous rumours claimed that the Galaxy S9 with a substrate-like PCB (SLP) motherboard that will give space to a more significant battery pack. The SLP will be connected with major components such as DRAM, application processor, and NAND flash memory.

A recent note by KGI Securities' Ming-Chi Kuo tipped the presence of a rear-facing dual camera setup on the Galaxy S9. Samsung entered the race of dual-camera smartphones with the Galaxy Note 8 earlier this year. But the presence of two camera sensors on the next Galaxy smartphone would make a close competitor against the iPhone X that debuted in September with a vertically-aligned twin camera setup. The latest iPhone enables augmented reality (AR) features and an enhanced bokeh effect-included portrait mode. It's also being speculated that Apple will bring Face ID to all iPhone models next year. Samsung would provide similar features on its Android offering.