Digitimes: Android phone manufacturers find ‘Face ID’ variants too expensive

Android phone manufacturers find facial recognition sensors too expensive, Digitimes reports. In addition, smartphone makers are said to be afraid of violating Apple patents with their own variants of Face ID from the iPhone X.

The costs per phone run up to 60 dollars, reports Digitimes. Although the Taiwanese newspaper has often been wrong, Digitimes is known for good sources from suppliers of electronics manufacturers. In addition to the hardware costs, manufacturers must also integrate software into their devices to make facial recognition work via infrared.

Besides the fear of violating Apple patents, the relatively limited success of the iPhone X would mainly discourage Chinese manufacturers from developing their own variants. In addition to facial recognition via infrared, manufacturers hardly integrate iris scanners. Microsoft, among others, did that with the Lumia 950 from 2015 and Samsung has been doing that since last year’s Galaxy S8.

Instead, the smartphone makers would focus on the fingerprint scanner behind the screen. Vivo already presented the X20 Plus UD with such a fingerprint scanner, while the Huawei Mate 11 also gets such a scanner, Digitimes reports.

Apple released the iPhone X in November. The sensors for Face ID are located in a recess in the screen; the Essential Phone that came out a few months earlier also has such a cutout. The notch will be on many Android smartphones this year.