Samsung will, apparently, include an under-screen fingerprint scanner in its Galaxy S10, which will launch early 2019. The information comes from Korean news site The Bell, which says that Samsung has finalised the screen design for the 2019 devices.

The site says that the S10 will have a screen size of 5.8-inches, while the S10+ will have 6.3-inches of display. What’s not yet clear is what Samsung will call these phones. The S10 feels a bit clunky, and it’s unlikely we’ll keep going with numbers on these flagship phones. Perhaps we’ll see Samsung Galaxy X take over – although that was rumoured to be the new folding phone’s designation. Who knows, but it’s obvious we need to move away from numbers at some point, there can’t be an iPhone 18 and an S16, it’s just absurd.

Also rumoured is a 3D camera sensing system which might capture the public imagination. The Bell says that Qualcomm and Synaptics are responsible for developing the fingerprint scanner.

Qualcomm showed demos ages ago and there are now phones in production which use the tech. But given Samsung’s love of “infinity” displays means that there’s no real estate on the front of the phone. This forces the fingerprint scanner to the back of the device, and often means it’s harder to use. There are also many, many complaints that the scanner causes people to get finger grease on their camera lens too.

And under-screen scanner removes these problems and also gives the phone a pretty awesome new feature. Of course Apple has moved away entirely from the fingerprint scanner and now uses FaceID. Samsung offers similar features but there is still demand for fingerprint scanning too, which offers people a simple and reasonably secure way to lock their phone.

Of course, this makes a lot of sense. The S10 will mark Samsung’s tenth year of its popular smartphone and it will want to do something akin to Apple’s iPhone X, with new features that get people talking about the phone. An under-screen fingerprint scanner might not capture the public’s imagination, but tech writers and news outlets will give it a lot of juicy coverage as a result.