Samsung's forthcoming flagship devices are close to unveiling — hence, the rumors are slowly coming out of the woodwork. Evan Blass recently shared Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus renders, and he's almost never wrong, so aesthetics wise, people already know what the phones look like.
But do they know some of its newer features? It seems Samsung is packing a new recognition feature on both of its to-be-unveiled phones, and it looks like the South Korean electronics company's answer to Apple's iPhone X Face ID.
Intelligent Scan
An XDA Developers tipster dug through Samsung's latest Android Oreo beta software and found something quite interesting. The text states that two technologies — presumably the iris scanner and the front-facing camera — "work together for better results even in low or very bright light" and for "better accuracy and security." How it works remains to be determined, but an animation hidden with this source code illustrates that both front-facing sensors scan the face regardless if it's day or night. Watch it below:
What isn't entirely clear, however, is whether both sensors fuse their information together to deliver accurate results, or one of them serves as backup to the other in case the recognition fails the first time.
Still, given that current Galaxy phones have a rather finicky iris scanning process, pairing it with face-based scanning could make it much more efficient, faster, convenient, and consistent when users unlock their phone or attempt to access sensitive information.
Those who want to dig around the source code further can access it by downloading the Settings APK, which has been uploaded online.
The feature isn't currently available to Galaxy phones in the wild, so it's highly possible that Samsung will debut it once the Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus are released in late February. Of course, that doesn't rule out support for older models, as Samsung could also bring it to the Galaxy S8 or Galaxy Note 8 once each of their custom Android Oreo update arrives.
Samsung Galaxy S9 Rumors
Scheduled to officially be unveiled on Feb. 25, both the Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus are rumored to come equipped with Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon 845 processor. The base model gets 4 GB of RAM, while the larger one gets 6 GB. That's not all, though: the S9 Plus also gets an additional 12-megapixel camera, while the base variant comes with just one. The camera employs variable aperture, meaning it shifts from f/2.4 and the smallest-in-class f/1.5 whenever necessary.
The above details are of course rumors, however, so don't forget to take them with a grain of salt.
