The image shows a smartphone with an implausibly thin bezel, and an eye in the center of the screen, complete with a target over the top, suggesting a recognition process is underway. It also shows several common bills on the right of the phone, indicating the eye-scanning tech could be used to authorize payments. Samsung already incorporates this inside the Galaxy S5’s fingerprint scanner. Finally, it titles the image Unlock the Future, hinting an eye-scanner could also secure a phone instead of a PIN code.
Before we get too excited, remember this is being shared through Samsung’s Exynos account, where the tweets tend to be more technical, and sometimes more theoretical too. Exynos is the name given to the firm’s own mobile processors, which rarely find their way into devices headed to the U.S. and Europe, but there’s no reason any future eye-scanning feature couldn’t operate on a different chip.
However, the fact the tweet didn’t come from a Samsung Mobile account shouldn’t put us off too much. The company has been linked with adding in some kind of eye-recognition feature to a phone before, including the Galaxy S5 before it launched, and more recently, the mysterious Galaxy F too. There are other reports suggesting the new feature may find its way on to the Galaxy Note 4, which is expected to launch before the end of the year.
Samsung hasn’t put a date on its iris-scanning vision of the future, so we’ll need to be patient before finding out more.
