The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Tuesday granted Apple a patent for acoustic fingerprint imaging technology accurate enough to replace existing Touch ID optical readers, bolstering rumors that the iPhone home button is not long for this world.
As detailed in Apple’s U.S. Patent No. 9,747,488 for an “Active sensing element for acoustic imaging systems,” the IP describes a method of gathering biometric data, specifically a fingerprint, through ultrasonic transmission and detection.
Collected fingerprint images, once processed, can be applied to user authentication in much the same way as Touch ID.
