Samsung Unlikely to Add an Iris Scanner to its Smartphones -- Yet:

As smartphones become increasingly generic -- a rectangle with an OS -- manufacturers are looking for more exotic ways of making their products stand out.

Whether it be high camera resolutions, different screen sizes, or recently, the fashion for fingerprint scanners.

A rumour that Samsung might go one stage further and replace the fingerprint scanner with an iris scanner however appears to remain buried in the rumours department.

A company source told the Korea Herald that the iris scanner technology is not only too immature for deployment, it is inherently unsuited for use in a mobile phone.

"Who would want to put their handset up close to their eyes for authentication in places like movie theaters and bed, or even while they are driving?," the industry source said.

Another reason for avoiding the iris scanner is that the existing front facing camera cannot handle the necessary processes, so a third camera module would be needed in the handset, pushing up the price and adding to the handset size.