Samsung doesn’t shy away from its investments local to the American consumer. Take India, where Samsung’s R&D divisions have been at it hard in biometrics technology research, trying to impress the growing workplace-tablet market. There is a new device I am particularly speaking of, dubbed the Samsung Galaxy Tab Iris, said to be marketed at the workplace, and business/agency environments. In fact, as stated by Samsung India VP Sukesh Jain, the tablet “can be used by agencies using Aadhaar (a centralized biometric and demographic database operated by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) agency), as an authentication mechanism...as well as a variety of applications in banking, eGovernance services, etc”.

Fundamentally, this means this isn’t another run of the mill device. Although Samsung usually busts out quite lovely Galaxy tablets, this one is definitely a niche product (of course there is nothing wrong with that). As briefly explained, this model, while using special biometric-based services within the government, and running Android Lollipop, comes with ‘Samsung Knox’, enabled with ‘Secure Boot’. The Hindu claims that this “protects the Tab Iris from unauthorized hacking attacks, and produces UIDAI-compliant encrypted-iris biometric packets”.

Physically speaking, GSM Arena says this new Galaxy model has been based on Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 3 Lite from 2014. The two feature the exact same measurements, not to mention quite similar specs. There is a 7-inch, WSVGA (1024 x 600) display, and measurements of 193.4 x 116.4 x 9.7 mm in size, 237 grams in weight. Featured on the back of the tablet is a 5MP camera, located right next to its iris-recognition hardware. There is nothing to boast about hardware-wise, nor should the Tab Iris be compared with America’s favorite Samsung tablets, or “phablets’, like the popular Note 3. For example, inside the Tab Iris, there is a 1.2 Ghz quad-core processor, a 3,600mAh battery, 1.5GB of RAM, and 8GB of onboard storage, expandable to 200GB via microSD (whereas, inside the Super AMOLED Note 3 came a 1.9 GHz octa-core, 3GB of RAM, and 32GB of onboard storage).

Creating specific niche designs and products is especially important for tech giants such as Samsung, who are expected to reach beyond the common fingerprint scanner in order to thrive. There is a need to go further- to launch solutions beyond workplace guidelines, as means to protect customers at a governmental level. In the Tab Iris, we see Iris-scanning, whilst embodied in tablet form, which is innovative and particular to the regions that market it most. Wouldn’t that inquire we should be seeing such features here in America? I bet we’re up next. Yet, let’s be joyful for India, whose teams are stepping up and gaining the growing trend of ultra-security of the eyes, into the hands of many.