According to new patents, Apple is investigating a way to replace its capacitive fingerprint sensor with acoustic transducers.A recent patent filing noted by AppleInsider stated that transducers beneath the display or its protective housing could send sound pulses pass through the display glass and bounce off the ridges in your fingerprint. The filing suggests Apple will generate a digital map of a fingerprint from how sound waves bounce off it.Apple can install this acoustic system almost anywhere in your iPhone. Engineers might even place it directly beneath the display.Other possibilities include around the screen's perimeter or bezel, or even the rear chassis of the device. This way, Apple could ditch the Home Button and still use fingerprint technology. If the transducers are placed on the rear chassis, it could use the entire handprint.And it could use other body parts.In some cases the system might be configured to scan for particular body parts like a user's ear or a skin pattern in order to determine how the device is being held. Depending on the implementation, an acoustic imaging system might also serve as a robust replacement for other legacy components like an iPhone's proximity sensors.The patent application goes on to cover system details like ideal materials, transducer placement, controllers, drive chips, component layouts and more.KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo predicts the company will ditch existing Touch ID technology in favor of a dual – or perhaps two-step – bio-recognition solution utilizing an optical fingerprint reader and facial recognition hardware.Kuo further elaborated on Apple's face-recognizing technology in a note to investors this week, saying Apple plans to incorporate a “revolutionary” front-facing camera that integrates infrared emitters and receivers to enable 3D sensing and modeling.Apple's acoustic imaging patent application was first filed for in August 2016 and credits Mohammad Yeke Yazandoost,Giovanni Gozzini, Brian Michael King, Marcus Yip, Marduke Yousefpor, Ehsan Khajeh and Aaron Tucker as its inventors.
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