Samsung has been rumored to be working on iris scanning technology for smartphones for years now. A few weeks back, Evan Blass confirmed via his own sources that the Note7 would feature an iris scanner, but no further information was provided. A leak on Weibo today, picked up by Sammobile, gives us our first glimpse at the feature itself, and provides some much-needed visual evidence of its existence. Below, you can see what very much looks like a Note7 on the lockscreen, and it's asking you to use your eye-parts to unlock the phone. On the top left, we can see what looks like a notification LED, but if I had to guess, this may have something to do with the iris scanning.

It's not clear what technology Samsung has employed that allows this iris biometric verification to function - or how accurately. Previous systems have used everything from dedicated and bulky add-on hardware to a simple front-facing camera, the latter of which smacks more of gimmick than a truly secure authentication method, given how easy cameras can be to fool. I, personally, also wonder how well it works with glasses.

Hopefully we'll know a lot more about the Note7's iris scanner soon - the phone's official announcement is scheduled for August 2nd.