The Nexus 6 is a great successor to the Nexus 5, but it’s come out that Motorola had to cut a huge corner which could pose some serious problems to Android…and it’s Apple’s fault. Former Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside spoke to journalists that the Nexus 6 was supposed to have a fingerprint sensor until Apple got in the way. “…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. Woodside is talking about AuthenTec, the company Motorola worked with to pioneer biometric tech in 2011. In 2012, Apple bought AuthenTec for $356 million and now its technology is only used to make the Touch ID fingerprint sensors in iDevices.
Attempts by rivals to use different fingerprint sensor tech haven’t done so well; without viable hardware, Google hasn’t been able to integrate a clear biometric strategy into Android. And now, reports suggest Samsung has had a breakthrough in fingerprint tech, which it will use in the Galaxy S6.
