Metalenz has chosen Samsung Electronics’ Isocell Vizion 931 as its image sensor for Polar ID, a face unlock solution and the ‘world’s only’ consumer-grade imaging system that can sense the full polarisation state of light.
Polar ID cameras made their public debut at MWC 2024 in Barcelona at the end of February, the new face unlock solution was demonstrated inside the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 smartphone.
Within the Polar ID system, Metalenz’ polarisation-sensitive meta-optic is combined with a derivative of the new Isocell Vizion 931 image sensor. It captures polarised images in the near infrared spectrum with quantum efficiency and global shutter technology.
The system enables a 50% size and cost reduction over traditional face unlock solutions, and partnership with Samsung provides image sensor performance and manufacturing scale to drive rapid smartphone adoption.
“Our collaboration with Metalenz is not just about combining technologies; it marks a pivotal advancement in biometric imaging capabilities, making face unlock solutions with enhanced security and affordability accessible on a global scale,” said CY Lee, Vice President of the Sensor Sales & Marketing Team at Samsung Electronics.
“Polar ID is poised to bring secure face unlock to hundreds of millions of phones and a whole new class of sensing to millions of people. Leveraging the performance and scale of Samsung’s Isocell Vizion 931 image sensor allows our Polar ID cameras to quickly and efficiently determine the polarisation information in a scene, from which our imaging algorithms and machine learning models authenticate the Polar ID images,” said Rob Devlin, Metalenz CEO and co-founder.
Polar ID is under early evaluation with several leading smartphone OEMs. Additional evaluation kits will be made available in Q2 2024.
Credit for main image: sp3n/Shutterstock
