From virtual reality police training programmes to gun-toting drones and iris scanners, a public security expo in China showed the range of increasingly high-tech tools available to the country's police. The exhibition, which ran Tuesday to Friday in Beijing, emphasised surveillance and monitoring technology just as the Communist government's domestic security spending has skyrocketed. Facial-recognition screens analysing candid shots of conference attendees were scattered around the exhibition hall, while other vendors packed their booths with security cameras. From virtual reality police training programmes to gun-toting drones and iris scanners, a public security expo in China showed the range of increasingly high-tech tools available to the country's police. More innocuous applications, like smart locks for homes and big data applications to reduce traffic congestion, also occupied large swathes of the conference.

The Samsung Galaxy S10 is heavily rumored to arrive with an in-display fingerprint scanner. Now a new report from Korea claims that this could be true and that the Galaxy S10 won't have an iris scanner, but could come with an iPhone X-inspired feature. Samsung has not requested any of its suppliers to make iris scanners for the Galaxy S10, according to The Bell. The Korean news outlet claims that the upcoming Samsung flagship phone will have an in-display fingerprint scanner and 3D facial recognition technology, which will function a lot like Apple's Face ID on the iPhone X. Samsung is still lagging behind Apple when it comes to 3D facial recognition. The South Korean phone maker did introduce an Animoji competitor called AR Emoji on the Galaxy S9, as pointed out by The Verge. However, Apple already has an answer to AR Emoji called Memoji, which will arrive with the iOS 12 update later this fall.

Samsung's new flagship devices have both a front-facing 8-megapixel camera and an iris scanner. These work in tandem for "Intelligent Scan", which combine the secure identifying nature of your eye's unique makeup with a camera that detects your face. Samsung believes its iris scanner isn't as effective in bright light as it is in the dark, thus it's included the more traditional camera backup this time. With the new system, the S9 tries to sign you in with your eyes by default, but when that fails, it will use facial recognition. Samsung says the technology is learning-based, which means it should improve its ability to latch on to your face as you continue to use it.

Samsung has officially unveiled its successor to last year's Galaxy S8 flagship, and it appears the Galaxy S9 has a bit of a disappointing aspect. Apparently, its Intelligent Scan feature isn't as good as Apple iPhone X's Face ID even though the South Korean giant already combined facial recognition with its iris scan technology. Two years ago, Samsung unveiled the now defunct Galaxy Note 7 that came with the company's first commercial implementation of iris scanning technology. The company's 2016 phablet may have received a lot of negative press, but the iris scanning technology was definitely a stunning feat at the time. When Samsung introduced the Galaxy S8 and Note 8 last year, it did not miss the chance to bring back the iris scanner.

Recent Galaxy S9 leaks, many coming from the ever-reliable Evan Blass, tell us pretty much all there is to know about Samsung's upcoming flagship: It'll have a better chip, a better camera, and a repositioned fingerprint sensor. The S9 doesn't look groundbreaking, but it should be a nice upgrade for people still rocking an S7. But this being the smartphone wars, Samsung can't just let the iPhone X go unnoticed. While it's almost certain the S9 won't have a 3D sensing camera like Apple's flagship phone, a new feature hidden inside Samsung's Oreo beta called Intelligent Scan shines light on a new biometric that many will compare to Face ID. Intelligent Scan reportedly combines iris and face scanning to "to improve accuracy and security even in low or very bright light," according to messages hidden in the Oreo beta.

If you've been waiting to hear more on Samsung's next Galaxy flagship, we've got you covered. As well as everything else that happened over the weekend, naturally. Intelligent Scan would work day or night. Samsung has hinted that the Galaxy S9 might include more advanced face recognition, but we're now getting clues of what's involved. Deep inside the Galaxy Note 8's Oreo beta software, there's a hidden Intelligent Scan feature that uses both camera-based face detection and the iris scanner for "better accuracy and security" and improved results in "low or very bright" lighting.

Samsung has hinted that the Galaxy S9 might include more advanced face recognition, but we're now getting clues as to what's involved. SamCentral's sleuthing in the settings APK for the Galaxy Note 8's Oreo beta has discovered a hidden Intelligent Scan feature that uses both camera-based face detection and the iris scanner in tandem for "better accuracy and security" and improved results in "low or very bright" lighting. Given that the iris scanning on the S8 and Note 8 can be finnicky, this could deliver a much more consistent experience when you're unlocking your phone or accessing secure info. Just how it works isn't immediately apparent. A video included with the feature suggests that both the iris scanner and camera are active at the same time regardless of the conditions, but it's not certain whether this means combining their data or using one as a backup for the other.

As little as five years ago, most workplaces and office spaces were still stuck in the past, all but using Spinning Jenny's to get things done. But fast forward to now and buzzwords like virtual spaces, voice control and virtual reality technologies are no longer things you'd find in the Minority Report but everyday additions to the modern world. The era of disruptive technology is here. But we are less focused on the technology that is coming into play and more obsessed with what this tech will do to our working routines. Of course, being able to predict the future is not possible (if it was we would be winning that billion dollar lotto without a shadow of a doubt). But even though it is impossible to be totally accurate, that doesn't mean we can't foretell how certain trends will influence the future, especially given some of the tech advancements won't need any transition time, such as augmented reality, voice control and iris scanners.

Samsung Electronics has revealed that its Internet of Things or IoT platform now has facial recognition technology. Does this mean the South Korea tech giant could be incorporating a Face ID-like feature to its upcoming Galaxy S9 flagship? On Thursday, South Korean online news outlet Etnews learned that Samsung's IoT platform, called "ARTIK," has absorbed a technology that will allow its to recognize faces based on machine learning. This means Samsung products that support its IoT platform could also be capable of recognizing users through facial recognition. Samsung has also said that the machine learning of ARTIK can recognize faces with the help of Microsoft's "MS-Celeb-1M," a large scale real world face image dataset that already contains images of 1 million people.

It appears Samsung has no plans of catching up and competing with Apple's Face ID facial recognition technology, which the Cupertino giant introduced with the iPhone X. A new report is now claiming that instead of working on its own 3D facial recognition technology, the South Korea giant is focused on improving its iris scanner. On Monday, Patently Apple learned that Samsung is advancing the iris recognition feature it introduced with the Galaxy S8 earlier this year. The company is said be improving the feature so the upcoming Galaxy S9 would benefit from it. Specifically, Samsung is enhancing the way the technology recognizes the user's eyes in order for it to become a credible biometric verification technology for banking transactions.