Flagship smartphones have been using fingerprint scanners to unlock your devices as a way to differentiate themselves from the competition, and now Synaptics is making those features mainstream.
The Natural ID FS4600 fingerprint scanner bridges the gap between proprietary high-end and base functionality. Slated for mass production in Q3 2017, the FS4600 supports a bevy of flagship features including Synaptics' variant of force touch, swipe actions, and software button support.
The appearance of the buttons can be customized by the manufacturer as square, round, pill shape, and slim rectangular, and the feel can be spruced up with glass, ceramic, or simply polymers.
The two 0D soft buttons (zero depth) and the addition of force sense and fast swipe gestures in a ready made package will allow even budget level smartphones to this kind of functionality. Two soft buttons would allow software navigation/action buttons in the fingerprint scanner.
Pressure awareness allows to setup different actions for different types of presses, for example, a heavy press to quick-open a specific app, and light press to return to home.
Synaptics promises top-notch security with 256-bit AES TLS 1.2 encryption and an upgraded Quantum Matcher and PurePrint anti-spoof technology on their newest fingerprint scanner.