Samsung has launched the company’s latest tablet with Iris recognition technology – Samsung Galaxy Tab Iris in India at a price tag of Rs. 13,499. It comes in Black colour and it is Aadhaar-compliant and STQC-certified under “Make for India” initiative. The tablet is targeted at government benefit programs, enterprises, banks, education and financial institutions.
Commenting on the launch Dr. Aloknath De, Corporate Vice President & CTO, Samsung India R&D, said:
“We’re excited to offer biometric-based services to the billion plus people enrolled in Aadhaar. Our India R&D team has made significant investments in biometric technology research and we built this product leveraging our knowledge in hardware design, biometrics and security for a high speed scan, greater accuracy and high reliability.”
“Along with the device, we are providing an Identity SDK for application developers to build financial inclusion, payments and authentication solutions. This will encourage our start-up ecosystem to rapidly build relevant apps and services. We strongly believe this overall offering will in turn strengthen government programs such as Jan-Dhan Yojana and E-Citizen services under the Digital India initiative.”
Announcing the launch, Mr. Sukesh Jain, Vice President, Samsung India Electronics, said:
“This is another example of Samsung’s pursuit for meaningful innovations. We see great potential for the iris-technology solution to be used as a means of directly facilitating greater inclusion in the Digital India programme. The biometric authentication can also act as an enabler in facilitating integration of financial services with the ‘Aadhaar’ initiative. The Galaxy Tab Iris addresses consumer pain points across platforms such as banking, finance, education and various citizen services by bringing enhanced usability, versatility and reliability all through one device.”
On the specifications front, it features 7.0-inch WSVGA display with a resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels and it is powered by 1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400/410 processor which is paired with 1.5GB RAM. It runs on Android 5.0 Lollipop operating system and has 8GB in-built memory which can be expanded further up to 200GB via microSD card.
On the imaging front, it features 5MP auto-focus rear-camera
It has connectivity features like 3G, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.1, USB OTG.
It packs 3600mAh battery.
According to Samsung, “This will support government benefit programs and enable banks and financial institutions to streamline the process of an individual’s authentication, regardless of language and literacy barriers. This will enable users to access services remotely by embedding Aadhaar iris-biometric authentication capabilities. “This alignment will provide a more secure authentication and verification process and help the country transition away from traditional authentication processes. It is UIDAI compliant and can be used for child enrolment program where biometrics of the parent is used to authenticate children for Aadhaar enrolment.