It’s Apple’s fault the Nexus 6 doesn’t have a fingerprint scanner

Biometric security has started popping up in smartphones recently, most prominently in Apple devices. It’s just been confirmed that a fingerprint scanner was supposed to be included in the Nexus 6, and it’s all Apple’s fault that it wasn’t.

This little piece of information have been rumoured for a while thanks to the inclusion of a finger-sized indent on the back of the Motorola-made phone. Now Dennis Woodside, former CEO of Motorola, has confirmed that the Nexus 6’s fingerprint scanning dreams were killed by Apple.

According to Woodside Motorola was planning on bringing fingerprint recognition to its Atrix 4G smartphone in 2011 with the help of Authentec. A year later Authentec was acquired by Apple, leaving the rest of the industry to rely on what Woodside considers to be the second best supplier who “weren’t there yet”.

And so the Nexus 6 did not come with a fingerprint scanner.

As The Verge points out, that was a wise decision considering that fingerprint scanners on non-Apple devices have a tendency to be slow and laggy. I’m sure Nexus fans would have loved to see the feature included on the Nexus 6, but if it wasn’t going to work the way Motorola wanted then all it would have achieved is increasing the price.