The Galaxy S10 phones will feature a stunning Infinity-O edge-to-edge screen design, featuring a circular or pill-shaped camera hole near one of the corners. The camera cutout is a neat alternative to the infamous notch that everyone but Samsung copied this year, but it makes something along the lines of Face ID seemingly impossible.
Samsung, a report claimed, would not bring iris scanning to the Galaxy S10 series. With all that in mind, I wondered whether Samsung’s premium Galaxy S10 versions, the Plus and 5G models, would feature some sort of Face ID-like support, given that they’ll have two holes in the screens, at most, for the selfie cams. We still don’t have a definitive answer to that, but a discovery suggests Samsung hasn’t given up on facial recognition technology.
Dutch tech blog LetsGoDigital discovered new trademark applications from Samsung for various terms that have the word “vision” in them, including Private Vision, Detect Vision, and Dynamic Vision. If I were to guess, I’d say these marketing buzzwords are supposed to describe facial recognition features for upcoming smartphones like the Galaxy S10.
The same blog discovered some of the new Infinity screen-related marketing terms that Samsung introduced at SDC 18 in early November, well before Samsung mentioned them on stage — Infinity-O was one of them.
The new trademark applications were posted on the Korean Intellectual Property’s site earlier this week, only a few days after Samsung applied for them. The documentation suggests these Vision trademarks refer to sensors that would be able to recognize movement and could be used for facial recognition purposes.
The same blog notes that Samsung’s Dynamic Vision sensor isn’t new. It’s something that first came up a couple of years ago — a sensor that could record video with a speed of 2,000 frames per second (fps). That’s something that could be used to increase the security of facial recognition on the phone.
That said, we have no proof that any of these Vision products will make it into the Galaxy S10 this year. But the timing of the application seems to suggest Samsung is going to introduce these sensors soon. With CES and MWC on the way in early 2019, we’ll have at least a couple of Samsung press events to go through, as well as the official Galaxy S10 announcement, which should take place in February.
