Google has been talking about its upcoming Pixel 6 phones for months, but the company hadn’t announced a launch date or pricing information… until now. Google has scheduled a Pixel Fall Launch Event for October 19th, when we’ll likely learn more about the first phones to ship with Google Tensor processors, the biggest camera upgrade […]
biometric
iOS 13.5 will make it easier to unlock an iPhone while wearing a mask
Apple introduced Face ID with the iPhone X in 2017, allowing users to unlock the company’s flagship phones by looking at them… which is fine under normal circumstances, I guess. But all the fancy 3D face scanning tech in the world isn’t much use when your face is partially obscured by a mask. So Apple […]
Hack allows Pixel 4 Face Unlock to work with unsupported apps (root required)
Google’s Pixel 4 smartphone feature a brand new Face Unlock system that not only allows you to login to your phone by looking at it, but also to login to apps for banking, password management, or other activities where security is important. The only catch is that developers need to explicitly update their apps to […]
LG G8 ThinQ packs palm vein identification, depth-sensing cameras
LG’s latest non-5G flagship is a smartphone with a 6.1 inch, 3120 x 1440 pixel OLED display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 processor, 6GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, up to three rear cameras, and a 3,500 mAh battery. But it’s 2019 and none of those features are really enough to make the LG G8 ThinQ […]
New web standard could remove the need for remembering passwords… eventually
Odds are that you login to dozens of websites and online services on a regular basis… and odds are that you already know it’s a bad idea to use the same password for your bank, internet retail sites, your social media accounts, online gaming platforms, and media streaming services. But creating and remember passwords for […]
Vivo smartphones to be first with under-glass fingerprint sensor from Synaptics
This week Synaptics announced it’s begun mass production of an under-glass, in-display fingerprint sensor and that the company is working with a top five OEM. Earlier this year we’d heard that Chinese smartphone maker Vivo was working on phones with under-glass fingerprint sensors. Coincidence? Nope. In an article for Forbes, Patrick Moorhead says he got […]
Synaptics launches smartphone fingerprint scanner that sits under the glass screen
The company that makes the touchpads found on many laptops also makes fingerprint sensors, and the company’s latest is an optical scanner designed to sit below a glass screen on smartphones. In other words, it’ll be able to read your fingerprint through the glass, without the need for any cut-outs or indentations. Among other things, […]
BIO-key launches USB fingerprint readers (Windows Hello compatible)
Microsoft introduced a new secure login system called Windows Hello with Windows 10. It allows you to login on some devices using a fingerprint reader, facial recognition, or iris scanner. But for up until recently the only way to use Windows Hello was to buy a PC or smartphone that already had the required hardware. […]
Synaptics’ USB stick brings fingerprint authentication to any PC
Want to use your fingerprint to login to a computer without entering a password, but don’t want to buy a new PC just for that feature? Soon you may not have to. Synaptics has introduced a new turnkey solution for USB dongles featuring the company’s “Natural ID” fingerprint authentication. The company wants to license the […]
LG’s new fingerprint sensor fits below a smartphone screen (no separate button required)
Most high-end smartphones hitting the market these days feature fingerprint sensors (and some mid-range phones have them too). But there’s no real consensus on the best place to put the scanner: some phones have them below the screen, others on the back. A few companies even put them on the sides of the phone. LG […]