Long Live Touch ID: Why Apple Sticks With Older Tech
Phones
Speaker 1: Apple has created a brand spanking new iPhone that still uses touch ID. And I am thrilled. I'm tired of folks saying touch ID is dead. No, no, no. It is not dead. It will not be dead. And let me spell it out for you. Why apple will not get rid of touch ID?
Speaker 1: The updated iPhone se is here and it looks just like the last one, which also looks just like the iPhone eight. [00:00:30] Yes, it is a design that keeps hanging around because there on the bottom is the beautiful home button which contains the fingerprint scanner for unlocking an apple pay. It is done as touch ID. Now, every other new iPhone, the ones that no longer use a home button instead offer the extra biometric security of face ID where it uses a camera to scan your facial features. Face ID has been around since 2017 on the iPhone 10, and even after five years of tech upgrades, [00:01:00] we are still talking about the old standard touch ID. Apple may push face ID as the future, but it has not given the finger to fingerprints. And with good reason, let's start by looking at who wants the home button and touch ID.
Speaker 1: It is likely folks who are still holding onto older phones and want an upgrade, but want their iPhone to not change because they need some stability in their life. I mean, we, we all could use a little stability right now. I'm not judging. It's just nice for things to not change. Sometimes, you know, industry analysts report that we are [00:01:30] holding onto our phones longer than ever before. You can call it, upgrade fatigue. Some reports say we are holding onto our phones. Now for three and four years research group AMIA says you can see what's happening just by looking at generous trade in offers with carriers. Now offering more money for older models. They're trying to incentivize folks to buy a new phone. And instead of the old two year upgrade cycle, we see carriers offering financing for 36 months or longer. And why do you need to upgrade [00:02:00] when the iPhone success?
Speaker 1: This sucker from 2015 can still get the latest iOS 15. I mean, if you still have this phone and good condition, I applaud you well done. So apple looks at this data and knows that a phone that keeps touch ID can convince folks to upgrade. They can stay in the apple family and not have to relearn everything. And I don't blame folks who wanna stick with touch ID. It could be a better experience. And frankly, as someone who uses face ID, I miss the ease of fingerprints lately because [00:02:30] fingerprints are just easier. They work from any angle. There's less hassle. You just gotta touch it to pay. And bam done. Apple had to invent workarounds to make face ID work better because of our life with masks in the latest iOS update. Now you can use face ID, even if you're wearing a mask without fumbling around.
Speaker 1: And if you drop a few hundred dollars on the apple watch, well, you can also unlock your iPhone faster, but it's not a secure. My kids would just unlock my phone by standing next to me, face [00:03:00] ID will always have its awkward moments. Like I can't unlock it quickly when I'm in bed without glasses because I'm near sighted. And I'm sorry for holding my phone too close to my face. But those quirky moments aside, we see that apple must not want to just give up on investing in fingerprint reading technology, because we've seen reports that apple tested, putting fingerprint readers under the screen. One analyst even said it could come in a future phone. Now that's because it's something we've seen offered for years now from a number of [00:03:30] Android phones, including the latest Google pixels and Samsung models. We don't know if apple will go through with putting touch ID under the screen, but apple has put touch ID on the power button on iPads.
Speaker 1: Touch ID was moved to the power button in the brand new 2022 iPad air. And in the latest iPad mini models here, a user just has to put part of their finger on the power button and it reads the fingerprint. It's something so common sense for an iPad and it leaves the door open for apple to put the [00:04:00] same thing in iPhones down the line. And another reason cost all the cameras of face ID make the product more pricey. If apple wants to keep the cost of iPads down for education, they gotta stick with touch ID. They wanna offer a cheaper iPhone touch ID and MacBook still use touch ID because you don't always need all that your stuff in a laptop. Really. This brings us to choice. Apple needs to keep choice alive. In which biometrics it offers giving customers a diversity of options. Be it [00:04:30] personal comfort price or preference because if apple only offered face ID and someone doesn't want to use face ID, well, that means that customer is jumping to Android. You don't put all your eggs in one basket. The basket is face ID. The eggs are iPhones. The broken egg is a customer switching to Android.
Speaker 2: Any questions?
Speaker 1: Look at the competition side. Mounted fingerprint scanners are in a number of smaller phones. We see them continuously used by Samsung and other makers [00:05:00] like Shami and Huawei. If apple walks away from offering touch ID, it will only make Android look like the better dish. Yeah, I have no idea what this symbolizes. I was just hungry. Now, if apple does walk completely away from fingerprint biometrics, abandoning the tech that consumers are holding onto, they may say something about how brave it is to embrace chain.
Speaker 3: No, but it really comes down to one word courage,
Speaker 1: But it's probably not the right touch for now. Rest easy touch [00:05:30] ID fans. It's gonna be with us for a while, but I wanna hear what you think in the comments about biometrics and if you miss touch ID or if your face ID for life. So until next time apple gets me worked up. I'm you Carrie. Thanks for watching.
