Face ID News: Analyst Believes Apple Is Ditching Touch ID on Future iPhones by 2018
Apple will likely make Face ID the standard security feature of the iPhones to be released starting next year, according to notable analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.
Last month, one of the highlights in Apple's unveiling event was the introduction of the facial recognition feature on the iPhone X. However, the said device also dropped Touch ID along with the physical home button.
Kuo reportedly forecasted that this technical design will be applied on all iPhones to be released starting 2018 where the company will completely scrap the Touch ID system.
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In Kuo's recent note to investors that was obtained by Apple Insider, the analyst stated: "We believe this change will allow all new models to realize a competitive advantage via differentiation, on the back of an integrated user experience of full-screen design and TrueDepth Camera/Facial recognition/Face ID/AR applications."
Since the release of the iPhone 5s, Apple has adapted Touch ID as their mobile devices' primary biometric authentication system. When Face ID was incorporated on the iPhone X, one of the obvious reasons that drove the innovation was the removal of the physical home button to give way to the iPhone X's edge-to-edge screen.
However, if Kuo's forecast checks out with the iPhones to be released next year, this signals a new era of innovation in the history of Apple's development of the iPhone line. Added to that, the same report noted that Kuo also sees Apple bringing the major change onto their iPad products.
Kuo also expects that iPads released in 2018 will sport the TrueDepth camera -- the main component in how Face ID works.
Meanwhile, Apple is known as one of the trend-setters in the smartphone market. And with their release of Face ID and later making it their only biometric authentication feature, Kuo reportedly believes that it will greatly influence Android smartphone makers as well.
Thus, in the coming years, the analyst expects Apple's smartphone rivals to slowly drop the optical fingerprint reader feature as well.
