Samsung Galaxy Note 7 may unlock with a glance, report says

Fingerprint scanners are an excellent way to secure your smartphone from hackers (or prying partners). But as we've seen before, if someone really wanted to break into your device and steal your data, they can do it by lifting your fingerprint and printing out a mold.

What's harder to steal is a scan of your iris. No two people have the same iris pattern. And since your eyes aren't like your fingers, constantly touching things and leaving behind prints, they're even more secure as forms of biometric protection.

Rumors from earlier this year hinted at the possibility of Samsung's next Galaxy Note coming with an iris scanner and now mobile device leaker extraordinaire Evan Blass (@evleaks) has all but confirmed it.

In a series of tweets, Blass says he's confirmed that the next Note will be called the Galaxy Note 7, skipping the Note 6 moniker. It's believed Samsung's choosing to skip the Note 6 name to maintain naming continuity with the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge that launched earlier this year. 

Last year, the Galaxy Note 5 launched months after the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge. The Note 5 also launched alongside the Galaxy S6 Edge+. While the Note 5 and S6 Edge+ were identical internally, unsavvy customers might have thought that the Note 5 was an older model, simply because of its model number.

Blass also confirmed several key specs for the Note 7, including a 5.7-inch Quad HD Super AMOLED display, 64GB of internal storage and a microSD card slot for storage expansion.

If the specs are accurate and Samsung is sticking with Quad HD, it would mean that the 4K Ultra High Definition screen it showed off for VR likely won't arrive until next year for the Galaxy S8.

The Note 7 will reportedly come with a 12-megapixel back camera and a 5-megapixel front camera. These could be the same ones on the S7 and S7 Edge. 

The phone will also be IP68, which means it'll be dust-proof and can withstand up to five feet of water submersion for up to 30 minutes.

Samsung's reportedly going to ship it in black, silver and blue color options. 

The company has dabbled with eye-sensing technology before, but with little success. The Galaxy S4 came with an eye-tracking feature that let users scroll up and down pages by simply looking up and down, but the feature didn't work very well and was deemed gimmicky by many.

The Note 7's iris scanner could still include this feature, but it's more likely that it'll be used to secure the device even more or as an alternative to the fingerprint sensor. Imagine just looking at the phone and having it unlock. 

Imagine just looking at the phone and it unlocks.

But for Samsung to really sell it, the iris scanner will have to be fast and accurate. 

We don't know much else about the Note 7. A report from SamMobile in April stated that Samsung was working on two Note models -- one with a curved screen (like the S7 Edge) and one with a flat screen.

Other rumored specs included a Qualcomm Snapdragon 823 processor, 6GB of RAM and a larger 4,000 mAh battery compared to the S7's 3,000 mAh and S7 Edge's 3,600 mAh batteries.

Blass has a solid record of accurately leaking phones, so our confidence level in the Note 7 intel he's providing is pretty high. But as always, it's not confirmed until Samsung makes it official.

Samsung is expected to announce the phone later this summer, possibly prior to or during the IFA European tech show in Berlin.

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