4 It Can Be Elegant
The main problem with bringing back Touch ID is the fact that a Home button is, by today’s standards, pretty clunky. Apple likely doesn’t want to ruin the design of its edge-to-edge devices or cop out with a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor — nor would we want them to.
- In-display fingerprint sensors are already on the market, and several Apple suppliers are looking into producing under-display sensors.
- Apple was once rumored to be working on in-display Touch ID and it has patents related to the tech, including one that describes the front display of an iPhone becoming one big fingerprint reader.
On a separate but related note, Apple is even working on voice recognition technology that could be used for biometric authentication (“Voice ID”). While that would be handy for, say, HomePod, it could also end up on iPhone. We’ll get to why that’s important in a later slide.