Duh, Drake!
Because– started from the bottom, now we are here!
That joke may have been a really bad one, but it kind of fits. The fingerprint scanners started from the bottom after all. To understand this better, let’s start from the start.
Once upon a time, smartphones had to depend on passwords, pin, and pattern locks to keep peepy-eyes from breaking and entering, but that often did not work as brilliantly. To solve this problem, a new security messiah was born, a biometric measurement based on the unique print of each individual, (drum rolls please) fingerprint scanner.
Fingerprint scanners changed the way people used and secured their phones, and one of the very first residences of the scanners was the chin bezel of the smartphone, below the display (hence, started from the bottom, if you were still wondering what the joke was about). It stayed there for quite a while, but as the hatred for bezels grew stronger and the demand for an edge-to-edge screen increased, the chin eventually had to shrink, and the poor fingerprint scanner had to migrate.
A long journey from the face to the back of the smartphone was covered, and suddenly, the fingerprint scanner seemed like it had found a permanent address. The scanner stayed there for a very long time. This new home was not as accessible as the first one, where you could just put your thumb on the chin and Voila! The phone would unlock.
Here, your finger had to travel a little extra to reach the part on the back where the tiny, little, recessed circle (mostly) resided and had to unlock your phone from there. It was not inconvenient, but like on the front, it was another design element. And unlike on the front, this one did not double up as any button while the one on the chins usually acted as a home button.
But shifting the fingerprint scanner to the back was a very small price to pay for those beautiful, tall, edge-to-edge, nearly bezel-less displays. Happy at the back, the biometric scanner stayed there for a while. But after seeing the scanner settling so well on the back, the front suffered from FOMO and offered a fancier, more glamorous place for the scanner to stay– under the display, that way it would be on the front and would be a USP that any smartphone would be really lucky to have.
These in-display fingerprint scanners were not like your regular, old school scanners. Looking at a sleeping phone with an in-display scanner, you might not even be able to tell if it has one or not. What looks like a regular display at first glance, actually has a fingerprint scanner buried under. No button, no tiny recessed circles, just a display, with a scanner underneath. The best possible place for the migrating scanner, right? Well, that may be a popular opinion, but we tend to disagree.
As the residency grew fancier, the basics like speed and accuracy struggled. You see, the house under the display worked a little differently than mainstream sensors, as most of these optical in-display scanners capture the image of your fingerprint and then match it with your fingerprint every time you try to unlock your smartphone. They work. But there are times when they do not.
Major migration of the scanner may have been from the front to the back and then back to back (pun unintended), but the fingerprint scanner had taken a slight detour in the middle to find a rented accommodation on the side of the smartphone, which now seems to be making a comeback. And that is the place we like the best. Yes, THE BEST!
Smartphones like Honor 20 Pro, Samsung Galaxy S10E, Poco X2 more recently launched Redmi Note 9 Pro came with a fingerprint scanner mounted on the side. But these scanners on the side are not just scanners. Like IronMan, they are both IronMan and Tony Stark, because a side-mounted fingerprint scanner doubles up as a power/lock button, too. And we called it IronMan because IronMan is pretty chill about his identity as both Ironman and Tony Stark, like our side scanner. Sorry, rambling.
But that is not the only reason why a fingerprint scanner on the side makes sense. Having a fingerprint scanner on the side means one less button or recessed circle to put on the phone as compared to physical scanners. And it might lose some glamour points against the in-display scanner, but it is definitely more cost-efficient and generally faster and more accurate.
The side-mounted scanner is basically a flattened power/lock button with a slightly coarse texture, the same as the one on the circular fingerprint scanner on the back. Plus, reaching for a scanner on the side feels much more natural and easy than going on the back or finding one on the display. At least to us. We often found ourselves unlocking our phones by just merely picking them up, which just adds to the functionality of the scanner because you do not have to specifically reach out to a position to unlock your smartphone.
The side of the phone does not feel like a permanent home to the fingerprint scanner, we know. The in-display scanner is more dazzling, new, and fancy. But if there is one place, perfect for it, it is on the sidelines as of now.
Without a doubt.
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