Qualcomm unveils world's biggest fingerprint sensor for smartphones

Qualcomm was the first company to introduce an under-display ultrasonic fingerprint scanner, the 3D Sonic Sensor, the same piece of technology that's now embedded under Samsung Galaxy S10's stunning display.

Fast forward one year and the US company announced an upgrade to its last year ultrasonic fingerprint scanner, the 3D Sonic Max, which promises to accurately scan a fingerprint in three dimensions.

Unlike the first iteration that only allows users to scan one fingerprint, the 3D Sonic Max lets you scan two fingerprints at the same time. 3D Sonic Max, the latest version of Qualcomm's ultrasonic fingerprint sensor offers a recognition area that is 17x larger than the previous generation, allowing for increased security via simultaneous two-finger authentication, increased speed and ease of use.

This makes the 3D Sonic Max the world's largest fingerprint sensor and also the first in the world to enable two-finger authentication. On top of that, 3D Sonic Max promises to deliver 1::1,000,000 rather than 1::50,000, which should prevent fingerprint spoofing and inaccurate results. Qualcomm also claims that its new fingerprint sensor is faster than the previous generation, but doesn't say by how much.

We have yet to learn which handset makers will implement Qualcomm's new fingerprint sensor into their phones, but it looks like Samsung might be one of its clients.