Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra has a slightly newer fingerprint sensor

Ben Schoon | Feb 5 2024 - 7:46 am PT

The Galaxy S24 Ultra is an excellent, if expensive smartphone, but the high price tag does buy the latest and greatest components. As a teardown has revealed, the Galaxy S24 Ultra is using a newer ultrasonic fingerprint sensor from Qualcomm.

Under-display fingerprint sensors come in two main varieties. There’s optical, which uses a bright light and what is essentially a camera to recognize your fingerprint. This is the most widely used option, showing up on everything from flagship to budget smartphones, with wildly varying quality. The other option is ultrasonic, which uses sound waves to recognize your fingerprint. This has not been used very often at all.

Samsung has been using ultrasonic fingerprint sensors, specifically from Qualcomm, since the launch of the Galaxy S10. The company has largely been using the same sensor throughout that time, but a new teardown from WekiHome highlighted by Ice Universe reveals the Galaxy S24 Ultra finally gets an upgrade.

In the Galaxy S24 Ultra, the fingerprint sensor being used is the Qualcomm QFS4008. That’s a version of the 3D Sonic Gen 2 which Qualcomm first launched in 2021. The Galaxy S23 Ultra, meanwhile, was using the QBT2608 which appears to be another model that was under the same branding.

Is there any difference between the two? There’s no public information on the matter, but the newer sensor presumably could be a little bit faster, and appears to be ever-so-slightly smaller.

In our review last week, we noted no discernable difference in the fingerprint sensor, which isn’t a bad thing, as Samsung’s performance and reliability with this sensor has been stellar for years now.