Apple paid big bucks to acquire AuthenTec, the world's leading maker of fingerprint sensors. Following the $356 million deal, it took Apple's teams an additional year or so to apply AuthenTec's technology to Touch ID. An in-house project, Touch ID has rethought what fingerprint scanning on mobile devices should be like, resulting in a seamless and integrated solution that, in Apple's parlance, "just works".
That's not saying Touch ID isn't without pitfalls.
Apple cautions that fingerprint scanning doesn't work well with greasy or wet fingers and there are reports of old people's prints not being recognized properly as a result of a few decades worth of scarring and general wear and tear.
Despite rumors that Samsung's upcoming Galaxy S5 would feature iris scanning, KGI Research analysts instead pointed to a fingerprint sensor.
And now a publication called SamMobile says it's been able to confirm with a Samsung source that the feature will work by swiping one's finger over the handset's redesigned Home button. It would let users unlock the device by swiping and remember website passwords, the latter not (yet) being supported by Touch ID...
