The novelty and security feature of an iris scan on selected premium brand smartphones will now no longer be just restricted to these models. Qualcomm has incorporated this biometric mechanism into its Snapdragon 835 chipset making the function now open to any brand or model that uses these processors.

Touted to be the ultimate security feature and often seen on silver screen for high security facilities, the military grade feature is now in phones. With the smartphone becoming more integral in our everyday use in banking and finance, we can easily see the relevancy of such a function in the future. Such user authentication mechanisms moves away from passwords to more personalised protection.

The software on the 835 is engineered to capture iris images and then converted into a template that’s unique to each iris. The templates are then stored on the device and when a user presents his/her iris for verification, a template is created and compared to the existing template, resulting in either a ‘match’ or ‘no-match.’All this takes place below 1 second! Complexity of the software also prevents the iris scan from being duped by 3D molds, fake eyes and printed pictures of your eyes.