If it is up to Apple, Face ID is just the beginning. The company from Cupertino is working on a kind of Touch ID for the Apple Watch based on your wrist.
New authentication way analyzes skin on the wrist
If you turn your Apple Watch on after a night of charging, for example, you have to enter a code to unlock the smartwatch again. But if it is up to Apple, that is no longer necessary in the future.
An approved patent from the company describes that the developers of Touch ID have invented a new biometric authentication form. This does not use your fingerprint or face for verification, but the texture of your skin. The biometric sensor is intended for the Apple Watch and must recognize your wrist.
To do this, the sensor analyzes the texture and patterns on your skin under the watch and then unlocks Apple Watch. According to Apple’s patent, there would also be a processor in the watch that combines the ‘images’ of your skin texture.
So the sensor still knows that you are, even if you wear the smartwatch a bit more forward or backward around your wrist. The patent describes various ways in which the sensor should accurately read your skin, such as with infrared, an electric field sensor or via an optical image sensor.
For example, an infrared sensor also looks at the hair on an arm and then confirms that it is the right wrist for the watch. The inventors of the new variant on Touch ID for Apple’s smartwatch have previously contributed to the development of Touch ID for the iPhone.
Sensor processed in a wristband
It is in any case clear that it is processed in the current wristband of the Apple Watch, and is therefore hardly noticeable. For the time being it is only a patent application, which is still rather vague about how the function should be developed.
We can assume that we will not see any skin sensor on the Apple Watch Series 5, which may be available this year. Also read what Apple has even more in store for us in 2019, which may release these fifteen devices this year.