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Samsung Polar ID vs Apple Face ID: Real Upgrade or Just Catch-Up?

09/02/202609/02/2026 Nadia Malik Leave a comment

Everyone keeps saying face unlock is “good enough,” but Samsung clearly disagrees.

The company is reportedly working on a new biometric system called Polar ID for the Galaxy S27, and on paper it’s a direct swing at Apple’s Face ID – just without the giant notch and bloated hardware.

If this leak is accurate, Samsung isn’t just trying to match Apple’s security game. It’s trying to do it in less space, with fewer parts, and without wrecking the display.

Polar ID: Samsung’s Notch-Free Answer to Face ID

According to the leak, Samsung plans to debut Polar ID on the Galaxy S27, a flagship that isn’t expected until 2027. That means this isn’t some last‑minute experiment; this is long‑term roadmap stuff.

Rather than copying Apple’s infrared dot‑projection setup wholesale, Samsung is apparently teaming up with Metalenz, a US-based optics company, to build something different. The result is Polar ID, positioned as Samsung’s first serious Face ID-class system – not the half-baked 2D face unlock we’ve had on Galaxy phones for years.

The key pitch: comparable security to Face ID, but packed into a punch hole instead of a giant notch or pill.

How Polar ID Works: Your Skin as a “Light Fingerprint”

Apple’s Face ID fires more than 30,000 infrared dots at your face, builds a depth map, and authenticates based on that 3D structure. It’s accurate, but it needs multiple modules: a dot projector, an IR camera, and a flood illuminator – plus space to hold them.

Polar ID goes a different route. Instead of mapping thousands of points, it apparently reads polarized infrared light reflected from human skin. Think of it as treating your face like a “light-based fingerprint”.

The leak claims the pattern of IR light reflected from skin is highly distinctive and extremely hard to spoof. Static images, videos, phone screens, and even silicone masks supposedly can’t replicate the reflection pattern correctly. In theory, that elevates it well above the insecure 2D face unlocks we’ve been stuck with on Android for years.

If that holds up, you’re looking at a system meant not just for unlocking the phone, but for high-trust tasks like digital payment authentication.

Smaller Hardware, Bigger Deal: Punch Hole vs Notch

Here’s where things get interesting for design nerds.

Polar ID is said to rely on only two main components: an infrared projector and a compatible front camera. No dedicated IR camera plus extra illuminator cluster. Because of that, the entire system is reportedly around 50% smaller than Apple’s Face ID module.

That size reduction matters. According to the leak, Polar ID can fit inside a standard front camera punch hole, which has been Samsung’s signature look on its flagships.

If this is true, Samsung could offer Face ID-level security while keeping:

No giant notch
No Dynamic Island‑style blob
No massive pill cutout eating into the status bar

That’s a pretty big middle finger to the idea that serious 3D-style facial authentication automatically requires ugly hardware cutouts.

Speed and Low-Light: Matching Face ID Where It Counts

Raw security is one thing, but if biometric auth is annoying, people turn it off. The leak says Polar ID can unlock a phone in around 180 milliseconds.

That’s essentially on par with Apple’s Face ID. For real-world use, that’s fast enough that the biometric check finishes by the time you swipe up or tap the screen.

The system is also claimed to work in low-light conditions, which is critical for something based on light reflection. If it can reliably handle dark rooms, nighttime streets, and the classic “unlock your phone in bed” scenario, then it’s in the same usability tier as Apple’s solution, not the usual Android face unlock that just throws errors once lights are down.

Again, this is all on paper so far, but if Samsung actually ships those numbers, Polar ID moves from gimmick to legitimate daily driver feature.

Digital Payments and Real Security: No More Half Measures

Android users have been stuck in a weird split world for a while. You either:

Use fingerprint sensors (usually reliable, but sometimes janky under-display), or
Use basic 2D face unlock that most banking and payment apps refuse to trust.

Polar ID is being positioned as safe enough for digital payment authentication. That’s the real benchmark. If payment providers and OS-level security flags treat this as a high-assurance biometric, it changes how you interact with your phone.

Instead of juggling PINs and extra prompts, you could have:

Screen unlock with Polar ID
App lock/unlock with Polar ID
Payment confirmations with Polar ID

All while keeping fingerprint as a backup.

If Samsung pulls that off, it finally closes the embarrassing gap where Apple has had a true 3D, payment-grade face unlock for years, and most Android OEMs shipped camera-based shortcuts that are basically fancy convenience toggles.

The Catch: This Is Still Just a Leak

Here’s the annoying part: the Galaxy S26 isn’t even out yet, and this leak jumps ahead to the Galaxy S27 and a feature allegedly coming in 2027.

That’s a long time for plans to change. Components get cut, vendors shift, costs spike, or the tech just doesn’t meet expectations in mass production. Companies prototype ambitious ideas all the time that never make it into shipping hardware.

So right now, Polar ID is potential, not a guarantee:

We don’t have hard failure rates.
We don’t know how it handles glasses, facial hair, or masks.
We don’t know how well it works outside a lab.

All we have is a concept: polarized infrared reflection as a unique biometric signature, with a compact module that can fit into a punch hole.

Why Consumers Should Care

If you’re buying premium Android phones, you should be demanding more than bigger screens and another “Pro” camera mode.

Biometrics affect you every single time you pick up your phone, open a banking app, or approve a payment. Right now, Apple is still the default reference point when people talk about secure face authentication. Samsung’s rumored Polar ID is one of the first serious attempts from the Android side to actually challenge that, instead of pretending camera-only face unlock is the same thing.

If it ships as described, Polar ID could mean:

iPhone-level facial security on Android
No notch tax on display design
Faster, cleaner authentication for payments and secure apps

Or it could turn into another cool-sounding project that never leaves the roadmap slide.

For now, this is a rare leak that actually matters for everyday use, not just another megapixel bump or pointless AI marketing term. If you care about privacy, ergonomics, and not having a giant black chunk eating your screen, you should be paying attention.

Check back soon as this story develops.

Oppo Find 9, Missing Find 8, and the Charger Mess We Still Have

09/02/202609/02/2026 Nadia Malik Leave a comment

Nearly a decade of Android flagships later, we’re still arguing about chargers.

Back in June 2015, the EU had already been pushing for standardized phone chargers “for years” to cut waste. At the exact same time, manufacturers were busy playing naming games, drip-feeding flagships into different markets, and locking the best deals to specific regions. Different year, same consumer headaches.

The snapshot we get from GSMArena’s June 16–17, 2015 news feed is basically a time capsule of how fragmented, confusing, and brand‑driven the smartphone world was. And honestly, a lot of those habits never really died.

Oppo Find 9: When Marketing Beats Common Sense

The headline item: the successor to the Oppo Find 7 was “most probably” going to be called Find 9, not Find 8. That wasn’t a rumor from thin air — the Find 9 name had already surfaced in promotional material from Guangzhou Mobile, a Chinese carrier.

On paper, skipping a number sounds harmless. In practice, it’s a reminder of how much OEMs prioritize brand superstition and marketing narratives over clear product lineups. The Find 7 was one of Oppo’s serious stabs at the high end. Logically, you’d expect a Find 8. Instead, we jump to 9 because 8 can be culturally awkward or unlucky in some contexts, depending on how brands spin it — and because “9” just sounds more like a big leap.

This isn’t about nostalgia. It’s about consumers trying to make sense of a lineup:

You see Find 7, then Find 9. Is there a missing generation?
Is 9 supposed to feel like a double upgrade instead of an iterative bump?
How do you compare it across brands when everyone’s bending numbering to their will?

When you have to decode numerology instead of just understanding where a device sits in a range, the brand has already failed you. Oppo wasn’t alone here, but the Find 9 naming leak is a clean example of how Android flagships were built around perception first, clarity second.

The EU Charger Push vs. OEM Accessory Chaos

Same news page, totally different but related story: the EU had “been pushing for standardized chargers for smartphones for years” to cut down the environmental impact of shipping a new brick with every device.

That one line says a lot. Regulators were already trying to stop the charger circus while OEMs happily kept:

Shipping different chargers per brand, and often per generation.
Playing port roulette, shifting standards, and baking in fast‑charge tricks that locked you into their bricks.

Meanwhile, users were swimming in a drawer full of incompatible or half‑compatible chargers. Even if you were an enthusiast who cared enough to read spec sheets, you still had to memorize which plug played nice with which phone.

The EU’s stance was basic common sense: if your phone doesn’t need a brand‑specific power brick to function safely, stop acting like it does. Less waste, less confusion, less upsell pressure.

Yet the news feed makes it clear that standardization was a slog even back then. OEMs didn’t rush to harmonize anything unless they were forced to. There was too much money in accessories and branding.

2015’s Premium Chaos: Flagships by Region, Not by Merit

Scroll through those June 2015 entries and you get a roll call of how fractured the so‑called “premium” experience really was.

Sony was gearing up to unveil the Xperia Z3+ in India with a June 26 New Delhi event. HTC’s One M9+ and One E9+ — officially launched in China earlier that spring — had quietly become available for purchase in the US, but through a third‑party seller, not through a straightforward official local rollout.

Translation: your access to top‑tier hardware depended almost entirely on where you lived and how much hassle you were willing to endure.

In India, you were invited to yet another Sony launch to get a warmed‑over flagship.
In the US, if you wanted a One M9+ or E9+, you could buy them — just not in the clean, first‑class way a flagship should be sold.
China got first dibs on certain devices because that’s where OEMs saw the biggest upside.

This wasn’t about technical limitations. It was about brands slicing the world into markets and deciding who deserved which device, when. If you cared about features, build, or value, you had to follow import channels, live with grey‑market warranties, or settle for a lesser variant.

And remember, this is the “premium” segment — the phones that were supposed to represent a company’s best work.

Micromax, Meizu, LG, Microsoft: Flags in the Mid‑Range Ground

It wasn’t just the global giants fighting for attention. The same news page shows how aggressively smaller or regional brands were trying to claim their space.

Micromax had sent media invites for a flagship launch in New Delhi with cryptic teaser text: “Mystery prisoner found locked in. Can he escape his…”. Classic 2010s marketing — vague, theatrical, and light on actual information. If you were trying to decide whether to care, you got mood instead of data.

Meizu’s m2 note had already been announced and was hitting pre‑orders from multiple online retailers. The catch: international prices were “significantly higher” than domestic ones. So the people least able to afford a price hike — buyers hunting for solid mid‑range value — got punished by markups.

Then there’s LG, extending a G4 promo in the US, offering a sweetener to early adopters but keeping it US‑only. Microsoft was “doing quite alright” in the mid‑range and budget segments, while fans were still waiting on a true flagship.

What all of this has in common:

Pricing and promos were laser‑targeted by region.
Your buying power and device options were totally different depending on your country.
The most price‑sensitive buyers (mid‑range and budget) got hammered by international markups and scattered availability.

In other words, the people who arguably needed smartphones to be simple, predictable purchases got the most complicated deal.

Android 5.1.1 and the Software Fragmentation Shadow

The page closes out with a mention of Google releasing Android 5.1.1 Lollipop factory images. No flowery language, no drama — just another version of Android landing.

But in context, that line is a reminder: for every shiny flagship teaser or promo deal, there was a quieter but much more important question in the background. Would your device ever see that update? Would it get it quickly? Would your carrier or OEM decide your two‑year‑old phone didn’t matter anymore?

Factory images going live meant people with certain Nexus hardware could immediately flash the new build. Everyone else? Good luck waiting for OEMs and carriers to care.

That imbalance — Google moving on one timeline, OEMs on another, carriers on a third — is the same pattern you see in hardware:

Multiple Sony, HTC, LG, Micromax, Meizu, Oppo, Microsoft stories in one feed.
Each treating regions, features, and support windows differently.
Users left to sort through the mess and hope they picked the right horse.

Same Playbook, New Year

Viewed as a whole, this random slice of June 2015 news reads like a playbook manufacturers never really abandoned:

Naming stunts like Oppo’s Find 9 leak, where branding outweighs clarity.
Years‑long regulatory pressure for basic things like charger standards.
Regional flagships and mid‑rangers chopped up by launch market and pricing.
Software updates as a privilege, not a baseline.

None of these moves were accidents. They were strategic choices that made phones harder to compare, harder to buy fairly, and harder to keep updated, while brands squeezed extra margin from accessories, markets, and marketing.

So when we look back at Oppo skipping Find 8 or the EU still arguing about chargers in 2015, it’s not trivia. It’s a reminder that if consumers don’t keep pushing for clarity, standards, and fair access, OEMs will happily keep playing the same old games.

Check back soon as this story develops.

Honor Magic V6 and Find N6: Big Specs, Vague Stylus Promises

09/02/202609/02/2026 Nadia Malik Leave a comment

The Galaxy Z Fold series finally made the S Pen work on a foldable. Honor and Oppo now say they’re bringing “next‑gen” stylus tech to their 2026 foldables. The difference? Samsung actually ships something you can understand and buy, while these new leaks are mostly buzzwords with almost no detail.

“Multispectral” Stylus: Cool Term, Zero Explanation

According to a new report from China, the upcoming Honor Magic V6 and Oppo Find N6 will feature so‑called “multispectral” stylus support. The leak comes from Smart Pikachu, a regular tipster on Chinese platforms, but he doesn’t explain what multispectral actually means in this context.

Right now, that word is doing all the heavy lifting. There’s no defined standard for “multispectral” in stylus tech on phones, so we’re left guessing. The speculation is predictable: maybe more sensors inside the pen, better pressure detection, more precise angle sensing, hover detection, and some AI‑driven software tricks.

That’s all plausible, but it’s also basic expectation setting for any 2026 premium stylus device. If you’re going to call it next‑gen, you should be able to say more than “it might have better accuracy and lower latency.” That’s the same promise we’ve been hearing for a decade.

What Next‑Gen Stylus Support Actually Needs to Fix

The leaked claims circle around familiar pain points: precision, latency, palm rejection, and hover behavior. In theory, more sensors in the stylus could track pressure curves and tilt more accurately, giving artists and note‑takers finer control and fewer jittery lines. Better palm rejection and hover detection could make writing on a big foldable panel feel less like fighting the software and more like using a real notebook.

The problem is that none of this is unique or clearly defined here. “Improved precision” and “lower latency” are only meaningful if someone gives real numbers, like latency in milliseconds or pressure levels supported. We don’t get that. We just get the implication that it’ll be better than “current offerings” — a very low bar when you’re talking about generic Android stylus support.

AI tricks are also mentioned as part of this next‑gen package, but again, no specifics. Are we talking handwriting recognition, auto‑summaries of your notes, shape correction, or something genuinely new? Without detail, “AI tricks” sounds less like a feature and more like a checkbox.

Honor Magic V6 and Oppo Find N6: Serious Hardware, Vague Story

On paper, both upcoming foldables are set up to be spec monsters. The Honor Magic V6 is already confirmed for an MWC Barcelona debut next month, and the Oppo Find N6 is expected to land sometime in March. So these aren’t distant concept devices; they’re basically around the corner.

Both are expected to launch with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip. That’s Qualcomm’s next flagship SoC, so performance should be more than enough for intensive stylus workloads like drawing, multitasking across panels, or heavy note‑taking. Add to that batteries in the 7,000 mAh range — big numbers for foldables — and you’re looking at devices that might finally handle a full day of pen‑heavy use without anxiety.

The camera hardware is also being pushed hard, with 200MP main sensors tipped for both models. That’s very much in line with current Android spec trends: giant sensors, huge megapixel counts, and aggressive image processing. Combined with the giant displays that foldables bring, you’d expect these phones to be productivity and media powerhouses.

But here’s where the disappointment kicks in: none of this hardware is tied to a clear use case for the stylus. The leak doesn’t say how Honor or Oppo plan to integrate pen input into their software, or whether they’ll ship dedicated apps that can actually justify the “next‑gen” branding.

Foldables Want to Be Notebooks, But Software Still Lags

Foldables are supposed to blur the line between tablet and phone. A big inner display should be excellent for writing notes, marking up PDFs, sketching, or using the device like a small laptop. Samsung at least has an ecosystem of S Pen‑optimized apps and UI tweaks. It’s not flawless, but it exists.

Here, all we really know is that Honor and Oppo are chasing better pen hardware. That’s fine, but the bottleneck for Android stylus use isn’t just how many angles or pressure levels the pen can detect; it’s how well the OS and apps take advantage of those capabilities.

Better palm rejection and lower latency sound promising on a giant foldable canvas, but without a strong software story, the stylus risks becoming another accessory you use for a week and forget. The leak doesn’t mention any new note‑taking apps, pro drawing tools, or multitasking features that actually buy into this multispectral idea.

Premium Specs, Missed Opportunity on Clarity

The timing is what makes this underwhelming. We’re close to launch: Honor Magic V6 at MWC next month and Oppo Find N6 likely in March. Yet the most talked‑about new feature — the next‑gen stylus — is wrapped in vague language with no hard details.

For a category that’s supposed to justify premium pricing, that’s not great. If you’re going to lean on words like “next‑gen” and “multispectral,” you should be ready to back them up with specifics: how much latency is reduced, how many angles are tracked, what AI features are included, and how it compares to existing options.

Instead, we get the usual laundry list of maybes: maybe more sensors, maybe more pressure levels, maybe better accuracy, maybe hover detection. That’s less a vision and more a wish list, and it doesn’t help potential buyers figure out whether they should wait for these models or just grab an existing foldable with a proven pen.

Honor and Oppo clearly aren’t phoning it in on hardware: Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, ~7,000 mAh batteries, and 200MP cameras are all serious moves. But on the stylus side, which they’re trying to frame as a headline feature, the messaging feels half‑baked.

If this is the start of a real push to make foldables into proper digital notebooks, we need more than hype. We need details.

Have thoughts on this? Share them in the comments.