This is what the Nexus 6’s fingerprint scanner would have looked like if it had one
Wondering what the Nexus 6’s fingerprint scanner might have looked like had it launched with one? This doesn’t give us an exact idea, but a newly leaked early prototype of the device shows how Motorola was planning to implement the thing.
As we suspected, the iconic dimple housing Motorola’s logo on the back was originally put in place to accommodate a fingerprint scanner. The images show the reading surface, the underlying sensor, and even some of the circuitry that leads to the motherboard.
Rumors of a Nexus 6 with a fingerprint scanner ran rampant, so many of us were disappointed to find that it lacked such a feature when it launched. It’s not because the rumors were inaccurate, though — Motorola really was looking to implement a fingerprint scanner.
The issue is that the technology available to Motorola at the time wasn’t up to far, largely thanks to Apple snapping up the company who had made the biggest strides in mobile-ready fingerprint scanning technology at the time. Motorola could have gone back to their roots and stuck the archaic swipe-style fingerprint reader that they first debuted on the original Motorola Atrix, but who wants to deal with that in 2015?
Things are changing, though. Samsung and Huawei have since been able to find solutions just as good as Apple’s implementation where you only need to press your thumb on the surface in order for it to get an accurate reading.
So why hasn’t Motorola tried it in their 2015 handsets? Tough to say. Perhaps the technology simply isn’t available to them, or perhaps they’re waiting for something even better on the horizon. We’d say Qualcomm’s Sense ID technology would be a great way to storm back into the fingerprint scene. Whatever the case may be, we’re glad they at least thought of it at some point, and there’s no reason to suggest they haven’t still been thinking about it all this time. Fingers crossed that the technology finds its way into one of their handsets in due time.
[via Weibo]