Tucked neatly within a Summer 2015 launch that includes 10 mobile devices, the world's first smartphone equipped with an iris scanner is set to push biometrics deeper into the consumer market.
Japanese wireless carrier NTT DoCoMo and handset maker Fujitsu just announced its lineup for the summer. The lineup include Samsung's Galaxy S6 series, several handsets from Sharp, a few Sony Xperia smartphones, a Disney Mobile phone, and the Fujitsu Arrows K-tai F-05G clamshell phone and revolutionary Arrows NX F-04G.
Just a few seconds of a stern, unblinking stare is all that is required to unlock that last phone on the list. The Arrows NX F-04G's iris recognition software can be used to unlock the smartphone or make purchases with the handset, much like the way Apple Pay works.
To set up the NX F-04G's iris recognition, users will need to launch the associated app on the handset and give their phones a long hard stare.
Elsewhere under the NX F-04G's hood, the handset is driven by an octa-core processor that has a 2 GHz quad-core unit and a 1.5 GHz quad-core clock. The Android 5.0 Lollipop phone has 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage space.
The phone has a 5.2-inch QuadHD display, a 21.5 MP rear camera and a 2.1 MP selfie camera.
The star of the phone, of course, is its iris recognition feature. With a standalone iris scanner running at around the $300 mark, the Arrows NX F-04G could spark widespread adoption of iris recognition software and hardware beyond the enterprise and onto main street.
The Arrows NX F-04G's iris recognition software complies with FIDO (Fast IDentity Online) UAF 1.0, an online authentication standard that already gained the backing of Google, Microsoft, Bank of America, Samsung, PayPal and others.
To be clear, the Fido Alliance is a consortium of banking and tech organizations that are working together to promote the proliferation of a variety of biometric identification solutions. Such solutions include iris recognition, fingerprint scanning, and two-factor identification, all of which leverage two FIDO protocols for encryption.
"The FIDO protocols are designed from the ground up to protect user privacy," said the FIDO Alliance. "The protocols do not provide information that can be used by different online services to collaborate and track a user across the services. Biometric information, if used, never leaves the user's device."
Check out the Arrows NX F-04G's promo trailer below:
