The Cupertino-based company has been working on a Touch ID system under the display for over a decade. The company has submitted and won tons of patents for it. A few years ago, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo predicted that the feature might appear on the iPhone in 2022. But it didn’t happen. Now, he thinks that this could happen this year. There is a chance to see the new feature on the upcoming iPhone 15 series. But before this happens (or not), today, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially granted Apple yet another patent relating to Touch ID under the screen. This time, the patent focuses on the use of “shortwave infrared” technology.
According to the patent information, future Apple products can use short-wave infrared wave technology. So when the user presses the finger on the screen, it will generate a flood lighting. The components under the screen can receive and quantify the reflection caused by the flood lighting in the short-wave infrared band. Then, they realize the function of fingerprint recognition under the screen.
As you see, the Apple patent describes how it works. But it’s too technical. So let’s explain it in simple terms. When a user touches the input surface of the display, the optical imaging system of the device can obtain an image and/or otherwise determine one or more properties of a finger. This means, the Touch ID under the display technology can obtain an image of the user’s fingerprint, vein pattern, blood oxygenation, and pulse; determine whether the user is wearing a glove; understand whether the user’s finger is wet or dry; and so on.
So it turns out that through the addition of this hardware, the iPhone can achieve more diverse human-computer interaction. But we have no clue whether the accuracy of blood oxygen and pulse detection through short-wave infrared under the screen is high.