Saturday, May 23, 2015
If latest reports are to be believed, Google is reportedly planning to debut native fingerprint authentication feature on its Nexus line of devices when M is announced at I/O next week.
According to reports, fingerprint scanners could indeed become a supported piece of hardware with Google’s stock Android M firmware, as several hints in AOSP source code point to the advent of fingerprint readers with future Android updates.
Previously few Android OS handsets including Samsung Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Edge, HTC One M9 and others have introduced the fingerprint authentication system. However, they were specifically OEM-created solutions. Android M on the other hand would natively feature the fingerprint authentication technology and would make it mainstream with the complete Android OS ecosystem.
Motorola’s former CEO Dennis Woodside has reiterated that the Nexus 6 was originally proposed to include a fingerprint sensor and the idea was cancelled at the last moment as Apple bought the only company producing a good fingerprint sensor.The report further explains that Google had been working on the setup and enrolment process pertaining to a fingerprint lock screen and a system fingerprint API service that could bypass the use of password to authenticate any Google Wallet or Play Store transaction.
Google’s current hardware lacks support for fingerprint scanner and this leaves us with two possibilities, wherein the feature will be unusable until the next Nexus device (Nexus 5 2015) comes out or Google announces a totally new hardware at the I/O event.
