Samsung Galaxy S9′s ‘Intelligent Scan’ combines iris scanning and facial recognition


The Samsung Galaxy S9 is going to be announced on February 25. Samsung is already marketing the camera system on the upcoming smartphone, which will reportedly have a variable aperture. But Samsung will likely have something else to discuss about its newest flagship.

A feature called “Intelligent Scan” has been surfaced ahead of the official announcement by SamCentral. As it currently stands there is no mention of the feature in any current build of Samsung’s mobile software, nor is it mentioned in any beta seeds of the Android 8.0 Oreo build.

There is a video showcasing the feature, which will apparently combine iris scanning and facial recognition to get a better picture of the person that is trying to unlock the device. It looks like iris scanning will work in low-light situations, too.

The idea appears to be for Samsung’s biometric security measures to work in tandem in an effort to make unlocking the Galaxy S9 a lot easier and smoother. If the iris scanner can’t pick up the needed information to unlock the handset, then the facial recognition aspect can kick in to grant access.

This is a nice idea in theory, but it will be interesting to see how well it works in practice. As noted in the original report, there doesn’t seem to be any indicator that this is a Galaxy S9-specific feature, as no new hardware is explicitly mentioned, so it is possible that Intelligent Scan could see the light of day on slightly older devices, like the Galaxy Note 8 or the Galaxy S8, too.

What do you think of the idea?

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