A fingerprint scanner in an iPhone. When we heard about it, we dismissed it as a ridiculous rumour and for good reason. Fingerprint scanners have been in computers for years now, they promise enhanced security but they are notorious for piss poor accuracy and when they do work they take way too long to read your print.
So you can understand why we didn’t think Apple would bother with a fingerprint scanner on their latest iPhone. It’s just too cumbersome, too finicky, too unApple to find the place in the sleek, intuitive iPhone. And then Apple reinvented the fingerprint scanner.
Obviously we’ve not yet tried Touch ID ourselves but looking at the many hands-on reviews and comments from people who have the experience is totally unlike anything that we are used to.
Apple’s Touch ID does everything fingerprint scanners didn’t. It’s easy to setup, it’s accurate, its fast, its intuitive and most important of all, it doesn’t change the way you use your iPhone. Yet at the same time Touch ID offers substantial benefits for mobile security than any other security method currently being used in a smartphone. It’s practical, robust security that’s so easy to use that it becomes second nature, and it makes Google’s Face Unlock look like a plaything.
No one sums up Touch ID more perfectly and succinctly than Johnny Ive: “Touch ID defines the next step of how you use your iPhone making something as important as security so effortless, so simple. We believe that technology is at its very best, at its most empowering when it simply disappears.”
That’s just beautiful.
Touch ID is a amazing and competitors will scramble to offer something similar in their next flagship product but is it enough to put the iPhone back at the top? We don’t think so.
See a demo video of how Touch ID works after the jump.
