Items tagged with Synaptics
Now that production is ramping up for Qualcomm's Snapdragon 845 processor, the next round of flagship Android smartphones are being announced (or leaked) at a quickening pace. Late last month, Xiaomi announced that its next flagship, the Mi Mix 2S, will launch on March 27th. Now an alleged leaked image of the upcoming smartphone shows that it may be one of the first devices to hit the market with an in-display fingerprint sensor. We've seen such technology in development from both Synaptics and Qualcomm, but it's too early to know at this point which solution Xiaomi is adopting for the Mi Mix 2S. Putting the fingerprint reader in the display frees up space on the front of device (although previous...
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For the last few years, flagship smartphones have gotten thinner and sleeker and have dedicated a much larger percentage of their front surface to the screen. Back in 2011, for example, the front surface of a Samsung Galaxy S2 was 64% screen, whereas the front of today’s Galaxy S8 is 84% screen. There are many more examples of the same trend from other manufacturers and what they all have in common is that as screens have gotten larger and bezels have gotten smaller, there is less real estate to work with for things like cameras, buttons, and sensors. Synaptics believes it has a solution to part of this problem with its Clear ID in-screen fingerprint sensor technology. Fingerprint sensors...
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While Apple may be grabbing the [biometric] headlines with its Face ID authentication system in the iPhone X, one company is looking to enhance existing fingerprint sensors for a new generation of flagship smartphones. Synaptics announced that it has perfected an under-the-display fingerprint scanner with what it calls Clear ID Optical Sensors. These are the world's fingerprint sensors of its kind to enter mass production for smartphones. Synaptics says that it will have branded smartphones available for demos at CES 2018 and that mass production will start with a top five OEM. The Clear ID FS9500 family is specifically designed for smartphones with bezel-free displays. The sensor...
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Hewlett-Packard has come under increased scrutiny over the past week after it was uncovered that keylogging software was found in a Synaptics touchpad driver installed on its laptop computers. The keylogger was present in debugging code, and was thankfully disabled by default. However, an attacker with physical (or remote) access to a computer could have activated the keylogger by modifying a registry key for their own nefarious purposes. Security researcher Michael Myng was the first to discover the inactive keylogger while attempting modify the backlight levels on an HP laptop keyboard. It was during his investigation into the driver, SynTP.sys, that he came across the dormant code. Naturally,...
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We took part in an interesting demo this week that was both eye-opening and somewhat alarming. We met with representatives from Synaptics to discuss what we thought would be its latest sensor technology or HCI device, but were treated to a real-world hacking display that would leave most people slack-jawed. Why, you ask? Because in only a few minutes, an image of my fingerprint had been stolen and duplicated, and it was used to gain access to my smartphone (and a demo notebook), but it could have just as easily been a personal / corporate laptop or any other device with a fingerprint sensor.It turns out, Synaptics was in the area to promote its SentryPoint technology, which offers end-to-end...
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When we first starting hearing early rumors concerning the Samsung Galaxy S8, it was widely suggested that the smartphone would ditch the home button (which is true) and would employ through-the-glass fingerprint reading technology (something that hasn’t come to fruition). A new report is shedding some light on why Samsung is instead using a less ergonomic rear fingerprint reader on the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+. If we roll back the clock a few months, you’ll remember that Synaptics announced the Natural ID FS9100 optical fingerprint sensor, which is capable of capturing high-resolution images through 1mm-thick glass, even with wet fingers. “The highly reliable FS9100 optical solution excels with...
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Do you love the idea of a fingerprint sensor, but feel like the button that enables this functionality ruins your phone aesthetic? Synaptics has a solution for you. The San Jose, California-based corporation is releasing the FS9100, an optical fingerprint sensor that enables a button-free design. According to Les Santiago, Research Director for IDC, “By bringing optical sensing technology with the right form factor and power consumption envelope to smartphones and tablets, Synaptics is enabling the elimination of the home button which is a critical next step to full top-to-bottom, edge-to-edge smartphone and tablet displays.”Natural ID FS9100 optical fingerprint sensors feature Synaptics’ SentryPoint...
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Synaptics was been working on a comprehensive, yet simple to use, fingerprint authentication technology that the company hopes will make a big splash with gamers and corporate users alike. Although it’s had a couple of names over the last year or so, Synaptics’ upcoming IronVeil technology -- as it is now known -- is just about ready for prime time. We’ve had the chance to play with a pre-production Ttesports Black V2 mouse featuring IronVeil for a couple of weeks and definitely think the technology has merit, for a few reasons.IronVeil is really a combination of hardware and software. The IronVeil fingerprint sensor is designed to be integrated into the body of a mouse, located where a user’s...
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When it comes to touchpad technology, we often see new innovations every once in a while. Apple helped popularize the multi-touch trackpad, and Apple again stepped up its game with the new Force Touch trackpad which allows provides haptic feedback in a thinner design profile. Even Synaptics has further advanced the touch pad with the SecurePad, which integrates a 4mmx10mm capacitive fingerprint sensor directly into the trackpad surface. But what about keyboards? We’ve seen some advancements in the mechanical operation of keyboards, and sure plenty of us have used backlit keyboards on notebooks and gaming keyboards, but that’s old hat these days. So leave it to Synaptics to revolutionize one of...
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We’ve all grown accustomed to the use of TouchPads on notebook computers, and many of you have no doubt used a separate fingerprint scanner (usually embedded in the keyboard deck) on more business-oriented laptops. Well, Synaptics is looking to combine the two technologies with the announcement of its SecurePad solution. Notebooks will no longer need to feature two separate hardware interfaces, so Synaptics sees this as both a convenience perk for consumers and a cost savings measure for OEMs. In other words, it’s a win-win solution with little (if any downsides) for all parties involved. The SecurePad features an integrated 4mm x 10mm capacitive sensor (no swiping required) embedded into the...
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Are you browsing this very article using a notebook? If so, the trackpad you're probably scrolling with most likely has Synaptics attached in some way. The company responsible for millions upon millions of laptop trackpads has just acquired a human interface solutions company by the name of Validity Sensors. The reason? Because fingerprint sensors are suddenly popular. Years ago, nearly every enterprise notebook shipped with a fingerprint sensor, but the software controlling them was often cludgy, which led to a quick demise. Now that Apple has ushered the Touch ID sensor in with the iPhone 5s, it's clear that software has finally caught up, and that fingerprint + biometric security features...
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We recently had the opportunity to chat with Synaptics and get some hands-on time with an array of already-available and upcoming input technologies. The big announcement coming from Synaptics today is that the company’s ForcePad has been selected for the User Interface Software & Technology (UIST) Student Innovation Contest, which will take place in October in Cambridge, Massachusetts. UIST is a forum for innovations in the software and technology of human-computer interfaces, which is sponsored by ACM's (Association for Computing Machinery) special interest groups on computer-human interaction (SIGCHI) and computer graphics (SIGGRAPH). For the past three years, Microsoft hardware...
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If you haven't updated the driver for your laptop's touchpad lately, you may want to think about doing so, particularly if your laptop has a Synaptics touchpad. As a user on Hardware Zone forums discovered, there's a new driver from Synaptics that enables multitouch gestures as well as two-finger scrolling and three-finger click. What's really cool is that this driver enables this functionality for older laptops that didn't previously support these functions. Although it was thought that older touchpads were not capable of multi-touch, this driver update appears to prove otherwise. Another pleasant surprise is the unlocking of two- and three-finger gestures since even modded drivers were not...
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