A recent survey by the popular smartphone news site Android Authority offers some intriguing hints about consumer preferences when it comes to mobile biometrics.
In particular, the site asked its readers to name their favorite fingerprint scanner style: side-mounted, back-mounted, or in-display. Its poll received 2,600 votes, with almost half – 48 percent – saying they prefer a side-mounted setup.
That’s a considerable majority. In-display fingerprint sensors came in second with 26.5 percent of the vote, while back-mounted sensors got 22 percent of the vote.
The results come with an important caveat in the form of Android Authority’s readership. Presumably, the majority of these respondents are fans of Android devices, and the Android ecosystem’s biometric trends have a considerably different character than those of Apple.
The latter is widely considered the pioneer of mobile biometrics, having catalyzed the field with its launch of Touch ID in 2013. That fingerprint sensor has always been housed in the iPhone’s home button, on its front face – a setup that wasn’t even listed as an option in Android Authority’s poll.
As for the relative unpopularity of in-display fingerprint sensors, at least part of that result may be attributable to one of the most prominent brands in mobile tech. The in-display fingerprint sensor of Google’s Pixel 6 was a fiasco, with numerous commentators singling out its poor performance as the one major flaw of the flagship phone.
Many industry watchers had expected in-display sensors to be the next big thing in mobile fingerprint biometrics, but Google’s failure and Apple’s focus on facial recognition may have slowed its momentum.
All that having been said, one more result of the poll stands out: only 3.55 percent of respondents said they don’t use fingerprint-based biometric security. That speaks to the widespread popularity of the mobile biometrics trend that Apple helped to pioneer, even across the Android ecosystem.
Source: Android Authority
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