In the latest news, InFocus today launched an Aadhaar enabled smartphone, the Bingo 20 (M425) which will authenticate one’s bio-metrics using the iris scanner. The device is priced at Rs 12,000 and will be launched sometime next year. If you are a little confused, the new device will essentially be a variant of Bingo 20 with iris scanning capabilities.
The Bingo 20 (M425) comes with a 4.5-inch display. The device runs on Android 5.1 Lollipop with 4G-VoLTE support. Inside, it is powered by a 1.5GHz Quad-Core Spreadtrum SC9830 processor coupled with 1GB of RAM and 8GB internal storage which is expandable up to 64GB via microSD card. For the camera, there is an 8-megapixel Autofocus rear camera with LED flash combined with a 5-megapixel front facing camera. To juice up, there is a 2300 mAh battery.
Boasting about the Aadhaar authentication support, InFocus claims that it has received Standardization testing and Quality Certification (STQC) from the Indian Government. Further, the company is also expected to launch more devices which will support the Aadhaar based biometric authentication.
Sachin Thapar quoted – “InFocus smartphone features IriTech’s superior iris image quality assessment and onboard K7 generation algorithm to provide good quality images and avoid false positives while maximizing true positive identification rates,”
“Moreover, the biometric data from the InFocus device gets encrypted by a UIDAI key at the chip level in device, making it impossible for anyone but the Aadhaar server to see the information. Such Encryption prevents information leakage of all kinds,” – Thappar added
Thappar also claimed that a technology like this has a great potential in smartphones. To illustrate, this can be very useful in situations where well grounded biometric details are required like in banks, E-PDS (Electronic Public Distribution System), MNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural employment Guarantee Act) payments, E-governance services such as passport, taxation, healthcare, and education etc. In other words, this technology coupled with the collaboration with UIDAI will help people authenticate their Biometrics on the phone itself.
Digging more inside, the smartphone sporting this technology requires less than 2 seconds to capture and generate a K7 image. As mentioned above, K7 is an algorithm which helps a camera identify pictures.
Revealing about the availability of the device, Thappar further quoted – “While the M425 will be made available in the next 2-3 months, we will bring more devices with this technology as we have received the certification,”
On the other hand, Nandan Nilekani, former Chairman of UIDAI said – “The InFocus Aadhaar-enabled iris smartphone is a great example of the innovation possible on the Aadhaar platform. The phone is timely as it can be used for applications like opening instant bank accounts with eKYC and as a cashless micro ATM for merchant payments. This will accelerate JAM (Jan Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile) implementation.”