In an interview with The Telegraph, Dennis Woodside, former CEO of Motorola, revealed about what happened to the Nexus 6 fingerprint scanner and why it was cancelled.
According to the ex-CEO, who now works at Dropbox, the dimple on the back of the device was meant to house the sensor. “The secret behind that is that it was supposed to be fingerprint recognition, and Apple bought the best supplier,” Woodside said. “So the second best supplier was the only one available to everyone else in the industry and they weren’t there yet.”
Woodside also added that he feels fingerprint recognition “wouldn’t have made that big a difference.” While the swipe-style sensors are usually mediocre, the removal of the sensor meant that Google had to delay work on its fingerprint API for Android, and this slowed down the whole ecosystem.
Fingerprint-sensing technology has been around for quite some time, but is relatively new to smartphones and tablets. The iPhone 5S was the first smartphone from Apple to come with the technology, which allows devices to “read” a person’s fingerprint and perform certain tasks, including accessing a home screen and getting into an app.
If the Nexus 6 had come with a fingerprint sensor, it wouldn’t have been the first Android device to have one. Smartphones such as the HTC One Max and the Samsung Galaxy S5 have come with fingerprint sensors. However, they were engineered by companies other than AuthenTec and have been roundly criticized for being unreliable.
