Goodix unveils new products; CTO speaks with Biometric Update

Goodix, formally known as Shenzhen Huiding Technology Co., Ltd., is a premier developer and provider of human interface solutions for mobile phones, tablets and wearables.

Goodix provides high-performance mobile fingerprint sensors, including a complete portfolio of undercover sensors, glass/sapphire cover button sensors and polymer coating button sensors. Goodix solutions include chips that enable secure fingerprint identification on mobile devices, along with the ability to simultaneously wake up and unlock these devices with a single touch.

Recently, the company unveiled a series of new products featuring cutting-edge technology, including: high performance in-cell and on-cell capacitive touch technology, single-layer multi-touch sensing technology, advanced fingerprint sensor technology for mobile devices and invisible fingerprint sensors.

Goodix CTO Dr. Bo Pi, noted in an exclusive interview with BiometricUpdate.com that his company draws on unique intellectual property that is the result of Goodix’s strong commitment to research and development. The firm’s R&D efforts, according to Dr. Pi, focus on designing a range of fingerprint identification solutions and touch controllers to enrich the user experience on mobile devices.

“We aimed to assemble the world’s top design team for this company by recruiting engineers from an array of other top semiconductor firms,” said Dr. Pi. “We are just as good in design engineering as those other firms because we recruited top talent, including PhDs from the U.S., Taiwan and China. We were able to recruit and build a great Chinese semiconductor company by aiming high. We are much more hungry to innovate and create value for customers and as a result we push the envelope to set new standards for mobile technologies.”

According to Dr. Pi, Goodix will release two new, innovative products at the upcoming Mobile World Congress in Barcelona later this month, which will include: a fingerprint sensor that integrates liveness detection to effectively stop spoofing through use of moulds or high-image photos; and a new optical sensor that will be integrated into an earpiece, which seamlessly measures a user’s pulse rate.

The company’s current range of products are already used in a number of devices by major companies, including: Toshiba, Nokia, Asus, Acer, HP, Dell, Lenovo, Huawei, ZTE, Meizu, Oppo, HTC, Alcatel, Vivo and many others. Goodix is also the touch solution provider of Samsung Display and JDI, as well as a reference designer for Intel and Microsoft.

Goodix’s unique biometric technology puts the firm at the center of efforts to enhance security for data and mobile payment. The company is a member of the FIDO Alliance, and is working with global leaders such as Alipay and Tencent to establish industry-wide mechanisms to bolster mobile payment security. Goodix is also the fingerprint identification provider participating in UnionPay’s standards review.

The quality of innovation by Goodix was recognized in January with two International Consumer Electronics Show 2016 Innovation Awards for products exemplifying outstanding design and engineering. According to both Dr. Pi and David Zhang, Goodix CEO, this represents the first time that a Chinese integrated circuit (IC) designer has won these prestigious awards in the embedded technologies category.

“Winning multiple CES awards as a relatively new entrant into the U.S. market and being the first Chinese IC company to win this category award underscores Goodix’s commitment to innovation in human interface and fingerprint biometric sensing technologies,” said Zhang, at the time his company won the award. “We are delivering incredible fingerprint sensing experiences to users by following an ingenious approach to product design. By focusing on people’s desires while understanding their needs, Goodix strives to make human interface technology in mobile phones, tablets, notebook computers, wearables and other mobile devices more secure and even easier to use and enjoy.”

The winning products at CES were the company’s invisible fingerprint sensor and its Goodix Link.

Goodix is known for inventing the world’s first invisible fingerprint sensor, concealed under the front glass of a touch panel, enabling device manufacturers to establish fingerprint authentication without a physical button, thereby creating sleek smartphones and small wearables devices with enhanced biometric security.

“Our invisible fingerprint sensor enables the smart phone makers to equip their products with a fingerprint sensor without a cutout to the front glass or back cover,” stated Dr. Pi. “The fingerprint sensor is concealed under the front glass of the touch panel and thus it is unnecessary to change the industrial design at all.”

Dr. Pi notes that the Goodix design is unique because it represents the latest generation of sensor technology. “We are the only company with a single chip enabling a thick cover sensor. Our single chip costs a little less and is easier to integrate because our sensor modules are very small. Our competition is still utilizing a two-chip design that leverages thin-coated, polymer technologies. While we also offer those technologies, our newest sensor provides ‘one leg up’, since it uses a thicker cover that goes beneath the cell phone cover glass. To make it work, the sensor uses an array of pixels with a sensor element that is even more sensitive, so it can read a fingerprint that is further away. And because reliability is key, we are only company to have designed an integrated algorithm for our sensor design in-house, in order to squeeze the best performance out of it. Other companies use third-parties to implement their algorithms. ”

The firm is also known for its “Link” technology, also referred to as “HotKnot” which enables users to transfer, share files and set up an ad-hoc interpersonal network using only their smartphone’s touchscreen, without requiring NFC or antennas.

The technology utilizes the electrical field of the screen, enabling smartphones to communicate from device to device by simply placing the touch screen faces near each other.

Goodix can integrate multiple HotKnot configurations. The technology allows interactive information transfer between digital devices, including phones, tablets, laptop by way of screen touching screen. The company has called such data transfer “revolutionary”, since the transfer occurs without requiring an external network.

Previously, BiometricUpdate.com reported that Goodix would expand its U.S. operations into Silicon Valley and Southern California in an effort to better support its increasing shipments of fingerprint sensors. With such an array of new, innovative products, industry analysts expect the company will experience fast growth.

Article Topics

biometric liveness detection  |  biometrics  |  capacitive fingerprint sensor  |  fingerprint technology  |  Goodix  |  mobile device  |  mobile payment  |  optical sensor  |  research and development