The Huawei Mate 20 Pro is almost certainly going be unveiled on October 16, and one of its rumored features has been corroborated by a leaked photo found on Weibo and published by TechTastic. Someone allegedly got a hold of the company’s next flagship phone and pried it open to reveal what looks like a fingerprint scanner beneath the front screen.
We had seen a spy photos showing the same alleged component before, so this new leak is further evidence that the Huawei smartphone will get an in-screen fingerprint scanner.
Given that the scanner doesn’t seem to connect to or correlate with a physical fingerprint button on the front screen, it’s possible that portion of the glass screen will scan fingerprints.
The Vivo X20 Plus UD (pictured in the lead image) became the world’s first phone with an in-screen fingerprint sensor, but it was only released in China, followed by the exorbitantly expensive Porsche Design Huawei Mate RS. That would make the Huawei Mate 20 Pro the first affordable consumer phone available in the US and other regions to launch with in-screen fingerprint sensing.
While Apple has led the charge with phones packing facial recognition-only authentication, it’s finicky enough for device makers to stick with tried-and-true fingerprint scanning. And the possibility of spreading that across the whole screen is clearly enticing: earlier this year, a report predicted that 100 million phones will have in-screen fingerprint sensors by 2019, according to CNET.
A fourth Mate 20??
We’d be remiss not to mention the other thing TechTastic released: a leaked image alleging that Huawei will release a fourth phone in the Mate 20 line. In addition to the previously-released Huawei Mate 20 Lite, and the upcoming 6.53-inch Mate 20 and 6.39-inch Mate 20 Pro, there may be a 7.21-inch Mate 20 X. It's supposed to get the Pro’s OLED screen, but retain the 2240 x 1080 resolution of the standard Mate 20.
We haven’t seen this information appear anywhere else, and less than two weeks before the Mate 20 and Pro unveiling, it’s unlikely we wouldn’t have heard a peep about a third model before. But it’s always possible that this could be marketed exclusively in a region that appreciates huge phones at cheaper prices, like China.
