Motorola's flagship Nexus 6 almost had a fingerprint sensor, but had to drop the idea as Apple acquired sensor maker AuthenTec, reveals the company's ex-CEO Dennis Woodside in a recent interview.
Dennis Woodside stated in an interview that the dimple on the back of the Nexus 6 was supposed to have a sophisticated finger sensor. He revealed, “The secret behind that is that it was supposed to be fingerprint recognition, and Apple bought the best supplier. So the second best supplier was the only one available to everyone else in the industry and they weren’t there yet,” says Woodside. Nonetheless, he adds, the addition of fingerprint recognition, “wouldn’t have made that big a difference.”
Apple bought sensor maker AuthenTec in 2012 for $356 million. The company's technology allows users to simply hold their finger over the sensor for prints to be recognized. Apple has used the technology in the Touch ID for the iPhone 5S, iPad's as well as its latest offerings the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.
Other devices like Samsung Galaxy S5 and HTC One Max come with inbuilt fingerprint sensors as well, but they were engineered by companies other than AuthenTec and have been widely criticized for being unreliable. So Motorola choose to leave the fingerprint sensor instead from its flagship device.
Dennis Woodside worked at Google before being appointed Motorola's CEO. He moved to Dropbox as COO after Motorola was sold to Lenovo last year. Motorola and Google have declined to comment on Woodside's statement.
Source: Telegraph