Recently, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office released a patent (Patent No. 9460332) for – capacitive fingerprint sensor including an electrostatic lens’ which is applied by Apple.
As per the reports by AppleInsider that this patent puts forward a description of a Touch ID sensor which would essentially read user’s fingerprints through other components of the smartphone such as display stacks and touch screens.
Further, The patent fuels the rumors of Apple’s intentions of doing away with the home button.
However, there are a number of issues that the company had face in order to make this possible. For example the blurring caused by the gap, which resulted in loss of resolution when the user made use of Touch ID sensor on the screen of iPhone.
The patent of Apple proposed the use of electrostatic lenses. According to the shape of the user’s fingerprint, the position, relative voltage and shapes of the patterned conductive layer could be altered. Further, this also made it possible for the information to be held between the sensing elements present on the display and the surface of the fingerprint.
On this concept, Apple has been working for some time as the patent was first filed back in September 2014 with the inventor of this concept being Jean-Marie Bussat. We are not sure whether these features will be integrated in future in the iPhone.
