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You are here: MacNN Forums > News > Tech News > Apple blamed for lack of fingerprint sensor on Google Nexus 6

Apple blamed for lack of fingerprint sensor on Google Nexus 6
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NewsPoster
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Jan 26, 2015, 11:27 AM
 
The Google Nexus 6 was going to have a fingerprint sensor, but Apple forced a change in the phone's design, the ex-CEO of Motorola claims. The Android smartphone was initially going to have a fingerprint reader on the back, where a Motorola-branded dimple now resides, but Apple's acquisition of AuthenTec is said to have put a stop to those plans completely.

Speaking to the Telegraph, Dennis Woodside advised about the dimple's potential as a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner, meant to identify the owner quickly. "The secret behind that is that it was supposed to be fingerprint recognition, and Apple bought the best supplier," admits Woodside, continuing "So the second best supplier was the only one available to everyone else in the industry and they weren't there yet." Despite Apple's $356 million purchase of AuthenTec, Woodside claims the fingerprint recognition aspect "wouldn't have made that big a difference."

Google Nexus 6
Google Nexus 6


Last month, Ars Technica discovered that there was code written with the fingerprint scanner in mind, but was removed at the end of August. It is suggested that, if the final hardware retained the component, Google could have used the Nexus 6 to launch a fingerprint API, with the report citing comments asking to "hide fingerprint API until new API is ready" and built-in warnings for if the finger is swiped across the sensor too fast or too slowly.
( Last edited by NewsPoster; Jan 26, 2015 at 11:53 AM. )
     
I-ku-u
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Jan 26, 2015, 11:38 AM
 
In other words, Apple was the first to realize that there was currently only one good source for the tech, and protected themselves. Limited resources tend to go to who has the most to spend and the rest have to settle.

I'm neutral on judging that except for one point: Apple has made the most of it by providing Apple Pay, a benefit/bonus I doubt Motorola/Google would have come close to equaling.
     
twolf2919
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Jan 26, 2015, 12:02 PM
 
This stretches believability - Authentec was bought by Apple in 2012 - the Nexus 6 was released over TWO YEARS LATER. We are to believe that it took Motorola 2 years to realize that they couldn't use the #1 supplier of fingerprint tech? It is hard to believe that the Nexus 6 was even on the drawing board at the time of the Authentec purchase.
     
iphonerulez
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Jan 26, 2015, 12:40 PM
 
This article was such an over-exaggeration it's ridiculous. There are plenty of other biometric sensors on the market and Motorola's Atrix 4G sensor was a poorly-working piece of crap. This is just one man's opinion and I think he's way off the mark. Why doesn't Google simply go with some retina-based eye scanner which some people claim is more accurate and secure than fingerprint scanners. It's funny how the smartphone industry said Apple's Touch ID Sensor was a useless piece of crap, but so far it has helped Apple quite a lot in advancing Apple Pay's popularity. I guess Touch ID recognition must work most of the time for it to become popular in such a short time.
     
Spheric Harlot
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Jan 26, 2015, 04:54 PM
 
Originally Posted by iphonerulez View Post
This article was such an over-exaggeration it's ridiculous. There are plenty of other biometric sensors on the market and Motorola's Atrix 4G sensor was a poorly-working piece of crap.
You kind of answered your own argument: There may be plenty, but there was really only one that wasn't a poorly-working piece of crap. Apple bought them.

Originally Posted by iphonerulez View Post
This is just one man's opinion and I think he's way off the mark. Why doesn't Google simply go with some retina-based eye scanner which some people claim is more accurate and secure than fingerprint scanners. It's funny how the smartphone industry said Apple's Touch ID Sensor was a useless piece of crap, but so far it has helped Apple quite a lot in advancing Apple Pay's popularity. I guess Touch ID recognition must work most of the time for it to become popular in such a short time.
When Touch ID was introduced, the naysayers decried it as a poorly-working gimmick BEFORE THEY TRIED IT. All others to date had been poorly-working gimmick pieces of crap.
But surprisingly to them, Touch ID turned out to be the industry's first fingerprint scanner good enough to be worth using for ordinary people (and it needed the absurd-seeming CPU horsepower of the 5s to function that effectively).
     
Makosuke
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Jan 26, 2015, 05:24 PM
 
Given the timeline of when Apple bought the company, and when this phone shipped, if that dimple on the back really was intended to be a fingerprint sensor, there are only a few possibilities:

1) Motorola wanted to put a fingerprint scanner on the phone because Apple's worked so well, but didn't realize until well into the design process (after the case was finalized) that all of the companies that weren't owned by Apple sucked too much to use.

This seems odd, because if they sucked partway through phone development, why would Motorola have put the dent in the case design--were they hoping the other companies would improve enough by the time it shipped that they would be usable?

2) They got ready to ship the phone with a non-AuthenTec sensor, but during final user testing the sensor was so bad they yanked it from the final product.

This seems more likely, but you still think they'd have noticed sooner.

3) Somebody in management insisted that they could put a sensor as good as Apple's on the thing, despite no worthwhile alternatives being available, and it was only right before it shipped that engineering convinced management the feature was an embarrassment.

Or, of course, #4, the dimple had nothing to do with the sensor, and this guy is just pointing out the reason they didn't use a sensor even though they wanted to was because nobody else's technology was good enough.
     
jpellino
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Jan 26, 2015, 06:51 PM
 
"We can't get what we wanted, but it's not really that great. -- Aesop's fables, updated for the 21st century.
Just sayin'
     
   
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