With the release of its new iPhone 16e, which started shipping on Friday, Apple is taking a break from fingerprint technology as a biometric security feature in its smartphone line-up. But the separation may only be temporary. 

In a move that underscores the tech giant’s ongoing commitment to facial authentication technology, Apple’s new phone for more budget-conscious consumers will offer Face ID instead of fingerprint scanning technology, dubbed Touch ID. 

“It’s the most effortless way of authenticating,” said Joe Palmer, chief innovation officer at iProov, a global technology company focused on biometric verification and authentication. If you think about how many times you unlock a phone in a day, even if it takes you a second and you’re unlocking the phone 100 times a day, it adds up, he said. “I don’t think we’re going to see an evolution beyond face anytime soon,” he added.

Still, technology and cybersecurity professionals say fingerprint scanning technology has plenty of life left — and Apple itself is likely to offer the option in future device releases, including smartphones.

Here’s what consumers need to understand about the latest biometric trends in smartphones, and what’s likely to come next:

Why fingerprints could still make a comeback

Apple’s Touch ID continues to be available in certain iPad models, and the company is likely to reintroduce the technology in subsequent versions of its smartphones, according to experts consulted by CNBC. One sign they point to that makes this likely: The company was granted a patent several years ago for under-display fingerprint reading technology and continues to work on improvements, according to several published reports. As a result, the company is likely to bring back Touch ID to smartphones once it perfects its version of under-the-screen technology. 

Apple declined to comment.

Consumers like choices, Palmer said, offering the example of a colleague who uses facial authentication to unlock an Android phone and fingerprint technology to authorize payments. Once Apple introduces fingerprint technology under the screen, it will likely be available in flagship phones again and work its way down through the models, he said.

Why Apple is focusing on facial authentication for now

Apple’s near-term move away from fingerprint technology in its smartphones makes sense for several reasons. For one, the company has always had a larger facial recognition culture, in part because its technology is solid and easy to use, said Roger Grimes, an analyst at KnowBe4, a security platform provider. 

It’s designed to automatically adapt to changes in user appearance, such as wearing cosmetic makeup or growing facial hair. It’s also designed to work with hats, scarves, glasses, contact lenses and many sunglasses. The company designed the technology to work indoors, outdoors, and even in total darkness. With iPhone 12 or later, Face ID also works with face masks.

The move away from Touch ID on smartphones is also an attempt to appeal to customers who want more screen space on their devices, technology professionals said. In past phone versions, Apple’s Touch ID fingerprint sensor was integrated into a phone’s home or power button. Whereas the iPhone 16e — similar to the iPhone 10 — has a notch, a physical area on its display for sensors. This design element has been used in smartphones for several years to accommodate front-facing cameras and microphones while meeting consumer demand for larger edge-to-edge screens. “Apple has been slowly trying to remove the home button from phones for many years to get the edge-to-edge experience where the entire phone is a screen and there’s no wasted space,” Palmer said. 

Thumb tech is cost-effective

Fingerprint technology continues to be available on Android devices, and that’s not likely to change anytime soon, even as newer phones offer facial authentication as an option, said Jean Fang, senior consultant for biometrics and authentication at Fime, which offers consulting and testing services to the payments industry. 

Face Unlock is available on Pixel 4 and Pixel 7 or later Pixel phones, including Pixel Fold, according to Google’s website. On Pixel 8 and later, consumers can use Face Unlock to verify their identity when they sign into apps or approve a purchase. The face recognition feature can be used on Galaxy phones or tablets to unlock the device and verify the user’s identity in certain apps, according to Samsung’s website. 

Even as more devices adopt facial authentication, fingerprint technology will remain a solid option for many phone users, technology professionals said. For one thing, fingerprint scanning is more cost-effective than other options such as iris or palm scans. “It’s a very good technology and it’s very mature and we have fingerprint sensors that are affordable everywhere,” said D. J. Lee, a professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at Brigham Young University.

“It works the way we need it to work most of the time,” said Grimes.

Biometric security limitations

To be sure, there are downsides to popular biometric options. Fingerprint authentication doesn’t always work properly, if, for example, a person’s finger is wet or chapped, or the sensor can’t detect an exact match for another reason. But facial authentication technology also has drawbacks, especially as deepfake technology advances, said Fang, who is also a member of the Secure Technology Alliance, a not-for-profit, multi-industry association focused on identity, access and payments. There can also be limitations on how well facial authentication works depending on factors such as lighting and whether the person had facial surgery such as a nose job or eyebrow lift, she said. 

“It can be a good feature for some lower-risk cases, but not all cases,” Fang said.

Despite the limitations of existing biometric modules, fingerprint and face authentication technology are expected to be the go-to biometric methods for the foreseeable future. That’s not for lack of testing of other methods, but for more practical reasons. About 15 years ago, Grimes participated in a product test that tried to identify users by smell, which seemed to work well until the test subjects ate a lot of garlic or drank alcohol. “It turned out a lot of people really liked garlic and that would overwhelm their scent and you have a lot of people that drink a lot,” he said.

While it’s possible to authenticate users through other biometric methods, like iris or palm scans — Amazon Whole Foods’ stores palm payments tech being a recent example — in many cases these may cost more and add more friction for users, making widespread adoption less likely. “It’s the balance between security, the convenience and the cost,” Lee said.

Skype is logging off.

On Friday, Microsoft announced that the 21-year-old calling and messaging service will shut down May 5. The software company is encouraging Skype users to migrate to its free Teams app.

Skype won attention in the 2000s for giving people a way to talk without paying the phone company, but stumbled in the mobile era and didn’t enjoy a major resurgence during the pandemic. Some people have forgotten that it’s still available, given the many other options for chatting and calling.

“We’ve learned a lot from Skype over the years that we’ve put into Teams as we’ve evolved teams over the last seven to eight years,” Jeff Teper, president of Microsoft 365 collaborative apps and platforms, said in an interview with CNBC. “But we felt like now is the time because we can be simpler for the market, for our customer base, and we can deliver more innovation faster just by being focused on Teams.”

Over the next few days, Microsoft will start allowing people to sign in to Teams with Skype credentials, and Skype contacts and chats will transfer over, according to a blog post. People can also export their Skype data. The company will stop selling monthly Skype subscriptions, and users with credits can keep using them in Teams.

“This is obviously a big, big moment for us, and we’re certainly very grateful in many ways,” Teper said. “Skype pioneered audio and video calling on the web for many, many people.”

It’s one of the most enduring digital brands.

In 2003, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström, who previously co-founded peer-to-peer file-sharing program Kazaa, launched Skype in Estonia with help from a band of former classmates with zero experience in telecommunications. Originally, Skype was a tool for people to call one another online for free. The quirky name stood for “sky peer to peer,” a reference to the service’s underlying voice over internet protocol, or VoIP, architecture.

Skype caught on quickly. By 2004, there were 11 million registered users. By the time eBay announced a plan to buy Skype Technologies SA for $2.6 billion in 2005, the user count had reached 54 million, and Skype was anticipating $60 million in annual revenue, thanks to payments from those who wished to call mobile phones and landlines.

Meg Whitman, eBay’s CEO at the time, envisioned that Skype would help people more quickly complete sales of products, especially costly ones, by connecting buyers and sellers. And eBay could charge extra for such calls. Skype users across the world could discover eBay and PayPal, too. The deal was completed 29 days later.

Under eBay, Skype’s user number grew, crossing 405 million by 2008, and communications revenue rose. But then Whitman stepped down as CEO, making way for former Bain executive John Donahoe, who didn’t think eBay’s core businesses were benefiting from the Skype transaction.

In 2009, the economy was in recession, eBay’s sales growth had turned negative, and the stock price was lower than it had been since 2001. In a statement that touted the release of a Skype app for Apple’s iPhone, Donahoe announced that eBay would launch a Skype initial public offering as part of a separation.

But eBay never filed for a Skype IPO. Four and a half months after declaring the IPO strategy, eBay said it had reached an agreement to sell Skype to an investor group led by Silver Lake in a deal worth $2.75 billion. The online auction operator received a 30% stake in Skype’s buyer. Under the investor group, Skype filed for an IPO, but that didn’t come to pass, either. Microsoft wound up acquiring Skype in 2011 for $8.5 billion, with eBay receiving over $2 billion.

“Microsoft and Skype together will bring together hundreds of millions or, as Tony said, billions of consumers and empower them to communicate in new and interesting ways,” Microsoft’s CEO at the time, Steve Ballmer, said at a press conference, referring to comments earlier at the event from Skype’s leader, Tony Bates. By that point, 170 million people were using Skype each month. Ballmer aimed to integrate Skype with several Microsoft products, including Lync, Windows Live Messenger, Windows Phone and Xbox video game consoles. Microsoft also got Skype running on its Azure cloud infrastructure.

Skype did not manage to accumulate a billion active users, though.

Apple’s native iMessage and FaceTime were picking up traction on iOS devices. In 2014, Facebook bought WhatsApp, a mobile messaging app, and months later, users gained the ability to place calls across borders. WhatsApp took off globally. So did Tencent’s WeChat.

Skype, meanwhile, implemented multiple redesigns and faced criticism from devotees. In 2016, Microsoft introduced Teams as a distinct “chat-based workspace” for organizations with Office productivity software subscriptions that would compete with Slack, which was then an emerging startup.

When Covid came and pushed people to work and study from home, Zoom, originally conceived for business use, became a consumer favorite for holding video calls. People could also connect on video through services from Cisco, Facebook and Google. Skype did see a usage bump, but Microsoft put major engineering resources behind Teams for companies, governments and schools, and the investment paid off. Analysts began concentrating on the number of Teams users that Microsoft would disclose, with the figure exceeding 320 million in 2023.

As for Skype, Microsoft’s current CEO, Satya Nadella, hasn’t mentioned it on an earnings call since 2017.

In 2023, Microsoft said Skype had 36 million daily active users. That was down from 40 million in March 2020. Teper declined to talk about how many people use the service today, but did say the number of minutes consumers have spent on Teams calls increased four-fold in the past two years.

“I think a good write-up of the history of the thing would mark the shift to mobile and cloud as a significant change in the communications category,” Teper said.

WATCH: What happened to Skype?

A week-long rout in Bitcoin worsened Friday, with the digital asset hitting an over 3-month low, reversing gains that followed the election of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Bitcoin was trading at about $80,500 in early trading in Asia, down 3.45% on the day and nearly 25% lower than an all-time high hit in mid December.

Bitcoin had enjoyed a surge in prices following Trump’s victory in November, with the leader having posed himself as a pro-crypto candidate during his campaign.

However, prices have slipped as investors shun assets perceived to be risky given the weakness in global equity markets, uncertainty surrounding the new President’s tariff policy and resolutions to major wars such as Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Gaza.

Investor sentiment was also soured by news that Bybit, a major cryptocurrency exchange, suffered a $1.5 billion hack in what’s estimated to be the largest crypto heist in history.

“It seems that the market has become volatile in reaction to the Bybit incident,” Jeff Mei, chief operating officer at crypto exchange BTSE said in a statement sent to CNBC, adding that inflation concerns and a pause in Fed rate cuts in the U.S. have also suppressed markets.

Still, some crypto bulls remain positive on Bitcoin’s outlook as they await key regulatory developments from the Trump administration.

Already, Trump has signed an executive order promoting the advancement of cryptocurrencies in the U.S. and developing a national digital asset stockpile. Meanwhile, his administration has created task forces and a “crypto czar” tasked with supporting a clear regulatory framework for crypto assets.

Geoffrey Kendrick, head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered, said in an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Thursday that bitcoin could surpass the $200,000 threshold this year.

Increased crypto adoption by institutions along with some “regulatory clarity” in the U.S., should lead to less volatility over time, he said.

—CNBC’s Ryan Browne contributed to this report