Apple to ditch Touch ID in favour of Face ID?

Apple iPhone 8 could be the last with a fingerprint scanner

The iPhone 8 might be last iPhone to come with a fingerprint scanner, with the company set to adopt Face ID as its default biometric security technology.

That's according to respected KGI Securities analyst, Ming-Chi Kuo, who claims that all of Apple's 2018 iPhones will ditch Touch ID in favour of facial recognition.

In a note seen by MacRumours, Kuo predicts that Apple will embrace Face ID as the authentication method for all of next year's iPhones in order to give it a competitive advantage over Android smartphones.

"We predict all new 2H18F iPhone models will likely abandon fingerprint recognition," Kuo said.

"We believe this change will allow all new models to realise a competitive advantage via differentiation, on the back of an integrated user experience of full-screen design and TrueDepth Camera/ Facial recognition/ Face ID/ AR applications."

This comes just weeks after Kuo said that the iPhone X's TrueDepth camera system is way ahead of the Android competition and estimated that it will take rivals '1.5-2.5 years' to catch up.

Kuo also expects that next year's iPhone lineup - which is tipped to include the iPhone 9 and iPhone 9 Plus - will all feature full-screen designs with minimal bezels, like the iPhone X.

This means that the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus could be the last to carry the design that Apple has been using since 2014's iPhone 6, and could spell the end of the line for Touch ID on the iPhone, which has been available since 2013. It's not clear if Apple will also ditch its fingerprint authentication tech on its iPad and Mac product lines.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Kuo believes that Apple's transition away from Touch ID will also turn Android smartphone manufacturers away from fingerprint recognition, noting that he expects high-end Android smartphones to ditch under-display optical fingerprint recognition in favour of 3D sensing techniques.

Just this week, speculation claimed that Samsung will be adopting Face ID-style tech on next year's Galaxy S9, but it's not yet clear if it'll be ditching the fingerprint scanner found on current models.