Apple iPad Air 4 Power Button Touch ID
Apple unveiled its latest iPad Air 4 tablet on September 15 with an A14 bionic chip and a larger 10.9-inch display. Arguably the biggest change to the iPad Air is its biometric changes, with Touch ID moving from the home button to the power button at the top of the iPad.
With that in mind, Apple VP of Hardware Engineering John Turners and Apple VP of Product Marketing Bob Baucher’s spoke on Saturday’s iJustine and JennEzarik podcast, Same Brain, about the changes that have taken place to the iPad since its September launch.
Concerning Touch ID on the iPad Air 4 tablet, Baucher’s described the change as “an incredible feat of engineering all the functionality and all the security of a fingerprint sensor into that form factor spec.”
When asked if the Touch ID uses the same technology as before, but in a smaller size, Baucher’s said it’s more of “technical evolution.” “We had to get rid of the home button on the chin to fit into a full-screen design, so we had to find another suitable place for the Touch ID sensor,” he said.
“It has such a narrow aspect ratio that it’s a very challenging design,” said Baucher’s, “Imagine that it would be smaller than what you see with a traditional sensor.”
It has to be very sensitive, Butchers continues, “and it also has to capture fingerprint data quickly as you’re doing the identification, and then it has to adapt over time so that it can capture a wider range of fingerprints. So no matter how you touch it with your finger, it captures a specific part so you can match the data.”
Apple’s design for the power button Touch ID could be applied to more products, and the day before the iPad Air 4 was released, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo predicted that more iPad models that do away with Face ID will feature the design by 2021.
