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Samsung Galaxy S5 teardown highlights 16MP camera sensor, biosensor and fingerprint scanner

Chipworks managed to get its hands on a Galaxy S5 ahead of Samsung’s new flagship handset officially going on sale on 11th April, and has been taking a look inside. The model it obtained was a Korean one, thanks to several carriers releasing it early. We’ve also noted third-party suppliers on Amazon advertising it as available in 1-2 days.

While Chipworks has only just begun its analysis, it does provide a sneak peek of the innards, together with a steer on three of the elements it plans to examine in detail: the fingerprint sensor, heart-rate chip and camera sensor.

The company says that the fingerprint sensor is split into two parts, a touch sensor embedded in the home button, and a second part connected to the touchscreen. It isn’t yet clear whether the screen simply detects a touch and switches on the sensor, or whether data from the touchscreen forms part of the identification process.

 

The company believes it has identified the chip responsible for analysing heart-rate and pulse-ox data, highlighted here as the C1N78B YMP4 1412, and will be decapsulating it to investigate.

Chipworks notes that Samsung switched from Sony sensors to its own ISOCELL technology last year. Chipworks hasn’t yet got as far as a detailed analysis of the 16MP sensor, but says it expects to find a updated version of the 8MP ISOCELL sensor shown below.

Chipworks says that it will update its blog post as analysis continues. In the meantime, you can see more photos in the gallery below, with additional ones over on the blog.

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