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Touch ID has been reduced to a partial role since the iPhone X in 2017. Of course, it’s present on cheaper iPhones and iPads where thicker bezels are more acceptable, but for Apple’s flagship – the iPhone 11 through 12 and newer iPad Pros – this has been replaced by Face ID.
Apparently, that might not be the case with the iPhone 13. TouchID could be back, but with one pretty big difference.
In the Wall Street Journal, Joanna Stern writes that “two former Apple employees” told her that the company was considering introducing both Touch ID and Face ID on the new iPhone. It would make sense in a year when the use of the face mask will continue to make facial authentication impossible to achieve.
The good news is, this isn’t a throwback to the chin-thick bezel where the fingerprint sensor once lived. Instead, Apple would apparently switch to an in-display fingerprint reader – a feature that was present on high-end Android devices for the past two years, but has yet to appear on everything. which runs iOS.
Interestingly, Apple may not be keeping up with Samsung in using Qualcomm’s super-fast ultrasonic fingerprint detection technology seen on the Galaxy S21. While Qualcomm declined the WSJ’s request for comment, a former Apple employee said the company was working with optical sensors instead, due to their perceived reliability over ultrasonic technology. An Apple patent from last year explained how an optical sensor can detect fingerprints placed anywhere on the screen.
The source pointed out one thing, however, that could curb anything overly ambitious. Any in-display fingerprint sensor, they said, should match Touch ID security standards as implemented on the iPhone SE, some iPads, and some MacBooks.
The gist of the piece as a whole is that most of the cool new features of the iPhone 13 will have already been seen on Samsung’s excellent Galaxy S21 phone, including a 120Hz display (likely to be referred to as “ProMotion Like on the iPad Pro) and maybe an ultra-zoom camera of sorts. However, the periscope zoom camera may not be available for this year’s iPhone 13.
It’s all part of Apple’s strategy. Whether it’s wireless charging, water resistance, or 5G, Samsung aims to be the first to come up with technology and then perfect it over generations. Apple, on the other hand, tends to wait until the technology is mature before delivering a smoother experience the first time around.
This was certainly the case with the in-display fingerprint readers. Anyone who has used one on Android phones will remember a slower, more complex, error-prone experience than what we have today. Hopefully, if Apple decides to bring Touch ID back for the iPhone 13, it will seamlessly pick up where it left off in 2017.
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