Digital security was made mainstream with the advent of smartphones. Initially, we had pin locks and pattern locks depending on whether you used iOS or Android and as the years went by, passcode lock became ubiquitous.
After a few years, biometric security started to gain popularity with the advent of fast, reliable fingerprint scanners. Apple first introduced it in their iPhone 5s lineup, improving on the system with each year's upgrades.
Since 2017 however, facial recognition to unlock phones suddenly became 'the next big thing'. Although many companies had it before, Apple's 3d sensing tech gave them an advantage even though it required a silly looking notch in the iPhone X.
This system is still in use today and it seems like it will be for a very long time. But when it comes to the Apple Watch, it seems like neither fingerprint scanning nor facial scanning is possible, given the small form factor. So, what can be done about it?
Wrist Scanning?
The most obvious thing would be to scan the wrist on which the watch is worn. Simple right? Nope. If it was that simple, Apple would have had it by the third or fourth generation.
In fact, we are only now hearing about patents about this technology. Recently, Apple was granted a patent that describes how an Apple Watch could scan the area beneath the watch and use it to uniquely identify a person. It would take an infrared image of the user's wrist skin and build a map of their texture, arm hair, or any other markings. It would be like fingerprint scanning but for your wrist.
This would be very Apple-like as they tend to keep things simple. The watch is always sitting on the wrist anyways so it wouldn't add any extra step for the user. Since we are only now hearing about this patent, it could mean that Apple is still years away from incorporating this technology into the watches.
Apple was also awarded two other patents concerning the watch. One describes a watch band that lights up when a notification comes in (pretty neat) and the other describes a self-adjusting watch band (pretty neat also).
Cool watch for scanning security.
Yeah!
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Thanks!
Thanks!