New iPhone 8 Leaks Reveal Tim Cook's Massive Gamble

As the leaks around Apple’s 2017 flagship continue to pour out, one area where doubts still remain is the use of Touch ID and biometric identification. Having already dropped the headphone jack on last year’s model, is Tim Cook ready to throw out the fingerprint sensor on the iPhone 8?

Thanks to the product shots from various case and peripheral manufacturers, as well as CAD details that allow for CNC milled dummy models, Apple’s move to create an almost ‘all-screen’ handset is there for all to see. The bezels have gone, replaced by an island of sensors that make the tiniest of beachheads at the top of the screen. The edges will curve to meet the glass. And one of the iconic parts of the iPhone - the round home button - will be consigned to a virtual existence on the touch screen.

Which leads on to the question of Touch ID. Integrated into the home button since the iPhone 5S, it has become a key part of iOS and it is used to unlock a handset, authenticate payments to Apple, activate Apple Pay, accessed by apps requiring biometric identification, and more.

With no home button, where does Touch ID go?

For a long time the solution was thought to be an embedded fingerprint sensor under the glass. That’s certainly in keeping with the perception of Apple as ‘magical’ and that might still be the case (in which case I’m going to be intrigued to see if a screen protector interferes with the reading). But what if, as many reports suggest, that this is impractical? After all Samsung can’t get it to work and has resorted to putting the sensor on the rear of the upcoming Note 8 phablet

Apple has a few choices. The first is to follow Samsung and many of the Android manufacturers and move the sensor to the rear of the machine, but there are no indications in any of the designs or cases that suggest space on the back for access to the sensor.

The more tantalizing prospect is to move away from fingerprint recognition and go with facial or iris recognition. This gets rid of the need for a separate sensor and replaces it with software. It’s a method used by Microsoft for Windows Hello and Samsung’s iris scanner with some success.

But those methods all have a fallback solution, be it a PIN code, password, or a fingerprint sensor. If Apple was to move exclusively to visual recognition its going to need to have made a significant leap in recognition software to account for the huge environmental changes a smartphone experiences.

Which leads me to think that while Apple may look at a software based solution, it must have something else in place if that fails. And that could explain the larger power button. This is a curious change to make given the consistency the on/off toggle has had in the size department over the years.

To me this feels like the practical answer to a replacement Touch ID system. It appears that Apple has designed the iPhone 8 with a better software-based solution to replace Touch ID but wanted a place reserved in the design for a fall back solution if the under-glass or facial recognition did not meet the high standards that the geekerati expect.

If those solutions worked, then they would be used and Tim Cook’s favourite phrase of “in a way only Apple can manage” would be used. If the research failed to crack the new biometric methods, then a Touch ID sensor in the power button would be used and sold as a more convenient location. Of course there’s nothing to stop Apple using both a power button based touch ID alongside a visual recognition system in the same handset.

We might not know the answer to biometric security on the iPhone 8, but the options are narrowing down. Now, will Tim Cook gamble away a fingerprint sensor for a gee-whizz software solution, or will he play it safe and double up?