Metalenz has announced Polar ID Under Display, a face authentication system that operates beneath smartphone OLED screens without compromising security or display quality. The company demonstrated the technology at Display Week's I-Zone. The system uses metasurfaces to capture polarised light information, enabling it to function seamlessly under powered-on displays whilst maintaining what Metalenz claims is a 0% spoof acceptance rate. This eliminates the need for screen notches or cutouts, allowing manufacturers to achieve true all-screen designs. The technology preserves polarisation signals through OLED displays, maintaining biometric integrity despite operating beneath the screen. Metalenz CEO Rob Devlin said the innovation enables seamless digital payment and continuous authentication for AI agents. Over 300 million of Metalenz's metasurface optics have been integrated into consumer devices.

Metalenz, a Boston-based optics startup, has unveiled under-display camera technology at Display Week 2026 that could significantly reduce the size of smartphone camera cutouts, including Apple's Dynamic Island. The company's optical metasurfaces technology uses a single flat lens with nanostructures to bend light, replacing bulky traditional multi-lens systems. More than 300 million of its metasurfaces are already deployed in consumer devices for depth sensing and autofocus. Metalenz has developed Polar ID, a facial authentication platform rivalling Apple's Face ID. The system captures polarization data to create unique signatures from different materials, enabling it to distinguish real faces from 3D masks. This makes it more secure than current alternatives, including Google's face unlock system, which can be spoofed with high-quality masks. The technology could enable more secure biometric authentication whilst minimising visible camera cutouts on smartphones and laptops.

Polar ID kills the cutout - Metalenz launches simple, secure, face authentication working under the phone display. GlobeNewswire | Metalenz Today at 7:45am PDT * Payment-grade face authentication under OLED display - zero sacrifice on security, cost, or screen real estate. * Metalenz to demonstrate Polar ID Under Display in the I-Zone at Display Week. BOSTON, May 04, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) - Metalenz today announces Polar ID Under Display - proving for the first time that payment-grade biometric security, cost, and a true all-screen design are no longer a tradeoff. Metalenz will publicly demonstrate Polar ID Under Display operating beneath a fully powered-on smartphone OLED screen in the I-Zone at Display Week. Metalenz is bringing the highest security face authentication to the Android ecosystem. Due to the unique capability of metasurfaces to capture polarized light information, the Polar ID camera can operate seamlessly beneath a fully powered-on OLED phone display. While current approaches are too bulky and suffer from image quality loss and decreased security performance under display, Metalenz has engineered a solution that maintains total biometric integrity. Key Breakthroughs: * Unrivaled Anti-Spoofing: The polarization signal that makes Polar ID unspoofable loses nothing through the OLED display. Metalenz's innovative metasurface design preserves the polarization signal through the display, maintaining the company's industry-leading 0% spoof acceptance rate. * The End of the Notch: For the first time, Polar ID allows manufacturers to finally achieve a true "all-screen" industrial design without sacrificing security or cost. "For the future of digital payment and continuous authentication while using AI agents, the interaction needs to be truly seamless," said Rob Devlin, CEO and Co-founder of Metalenz. "Polar ID makes this possible at scale for the first time. There is no longer a need to compromise. Users can now experience a continuous display and touch-free security. It starts at the metasurface hardware and flows to user experience." About Metalenz Metalenz is driving innovation in optics with metasurface technology, providing image sensing solutions that deliver unprecedented insights to mass market machine vision, enabling advanced sensing and transformative applications to proliferate where compact size & cost-efficient integration is a must for widespread adoption. As the leaders in commercialization, Metalenz innovation has enabled the shift of optics production into the semiconductor foundry, leveraging existing infrastructure and proven manufacturing processes. More than 300 million of the company's optics have been integrated into consumer devices, replacing conventional lens stacks for compact 3D sensing and resulting in the creation of a rapidly growing metasurface market as use cases rapidly expand. metalenz.com Media Contact: Carly Glovinski Senior Marketing Manager, Metalenz This is a paid placement. For further inquiries, please contact GlobeNewswire directly.