On new budget iPhone 16e, there’s a big change in Apple’s biometric security
Apple’s latest budget iPhone model, the iPhone 16e, which started shipping on Feb. 28, 2025.
Apple
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.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai addresses the crowd during Google’s annual I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California on May 20, 2025.
Camille Cohen | AFP | Getty Images
The Google Doodle is Alphabet’s most valuable piece of real estate, and on Tuesday, the company used that space to promote “AI Mode,” its latest AI search product.
Google’s Chrome browser landing pages and Google’s home page featured an animated image that, when clicked, leads users to AI Mode, the company’s latest search product. The doodle image also includes a share button.
The promotion of AI Mode on the Google Doodle comes as the tech company makes efforts to expose more users to its latest AI features amid pressure from artificial intelligence startups. That includes OpenAI which makes ChatGPT, Anthropic which makes Claude and Perplexity AI, which bills itself as an “AI-powered answer engine.”
Google’s “Doodle” Tuesday directed users to its search chatbot-like experience “AI Mode”
AI Mode is Google’s chatbot-like experience for complex user questions. The company began displaying AI Mode alongside its search results page in March.
“Search whatever’s on your mind and get AI-powered responses,” the product description reads when clicked from the home page.
AI Mode is powered by Google’s flagship AI model Gemini, and the tool has rolled out to more U.S. users since its launch. Users can ask AI Mode questions using text, voice or images. Google says AI Mode makes it easier to find answers to complex questions that might have previously required multiple searches.
In May, Google tested the AI Mode feature directly beneath the Google search bar, replacing the “I’m Feeling Lucky” widget — a place where Google rarely makes changes.
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Disposable diapers are a massive environmental offender. Roughly 300,000 of them are sent to landfills or incinerated every minute, according to the World Economic Forum, and they take hundreds of years to decompose. It’s a $60 billion business.
One alternative approach has been compostable diapers, which can be made out of wood pulp or bamboo. But composting services aren’t universally available and some of the products are less absorbent than normal nappies, critics say.
A growing number of parents are also turning to cloth diapers, but they only make up about 20% of the U.S. market.
ZymoChem is attacking the diaper problem from a different angle. Harshal Chokhawala, CEO of ZymoChem, said that 60% to 80% of a typical diaper consists of fossil-based plastics. And half of that is an ingredient called super absorbent polymer, or SAP.
“What we have created is a low carbon footprint bio-based and biodegradable version of this super absorbent polymer,” Chokhawala said.
ZymoChem, with operations in San Leandro, California, and Burlington, Vermont, invented this new type of absorbent by using a fermentation process to convert a renewable resource — sugar — from corn into biodegradable materials. It’s similar to making beer.
“We’re at a point now where we’re very close to being at cost parity with fossil based manufacturing of super absorbents,” said Chokhawala.
The company’s drop-in absorbents can be added into other diapers, which makes it different from environmentally conscious companies like Charlie Banana, Kudos and Hiro, which sell their own brand of diapers.
ZymoChem doesn’t yet have a diaper product on the market. But Lindy Fishburne, managing partner at Breakout Ventures and an investor in the company, says it’s a scalable model.
“Being able to build and grow with biology allows us to unlock a circular economy and a supply chain that is no longer petro-derived, which opens up the opportunities of where you can manufacture and how you secure supply chains,” Fishburne said.
Other investors include Toyota Ventures, GS Futures, KDT Ventures, Cavallo Ventures and Lululemon. The company has raised a total of $35 million.
The Lululemon partnership shows that it’s not just about diapers. ZymoChem’s bio-based materials can also be used in other hygiene products and in bio-based nylon. Lululemon recently said it will use it in some of its leggings, which were traditionally made with petroleum.
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Dylan Field, co-founder and CEO of Figma, appears at the Bloomberg Technology Summit in San Francisco on May 9, 2024.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Design software company Figma filed for an IPO on Tuesday, and plans to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under ticker symbol “FIG.”
The offering would be one of the hotly anticipated IPOs in recent years given Figma’s growth rate and its high private market valuation. In late 2023, a $20 billion acquisition agreement with Adobe was scrapped due to regulatory concerns in the U.K. That led Adobe to pay Figma a $1 billion termination fee.
Revenue in the first quarter increased 46% to $228.2 million from $156.2 million in the same period a year ago, according to Figma’s prospectus. The company recorded a net income of $44.9 million, compared to $13.5 million a year earlier.
As of March 31, Figma had around 450,000 customers. Of those, 1,031 were contributing at least $100,000 a year to annual revenue, up 47% from a year earlier. Clients include Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft and Netflix. More than half of revenue comes from outside the U.S.
Figma didn’t say how many shares it plans to sell in the IPO. The company was valued at $12.5 billion in a tender offer last year, and in April it announced that it had confidentially filed for an IPO with the SEC.
Wall Street banks predicted a rush of IPOs after Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election in November following a dry spell dating back to late 2021, when soaring inflation and rising interest rates pushed investors out of risky assets. While President Trump’s announcement of sweeping tariffs in April roiled markets and led a number of companies to delay their plans, activity has been picking up of late.
Stablecoin issuer Circle doubled in value in its early June debut and is now up more than sixfold from its IPO price for a market cap of almost $43 billion. Online banking company Chime also debuted in June, following Hinge Health’s IPO in May. Artificial infrastructure provider CoreWeave, which went public in March, jumped 46% in June and has quadrupled since its offering.
Buy now, pay later company Klarna, based in the U.K., filed for a U.S. IPO in March, as did ticket marketplace StubHub.
Figma was founded in 2012 by CEO Dylan Field, 33, and Evan Wallace, and is based in San Francisco. The company had 1,646 employees as of March 31.
Before establishing Figma, Field spent over two years at Brown University, where he met Wallace. Field then took a Thiel Fellowship “to pursue entrepreneurial projects,” according to the filing. The two-year program that Founders Fund partner Peter Thiel established in 2011 gives young entrepreneurs a $200,000 grant along with support from founders and investors, according to an online description.
Field is the biggest individual owner of Figma, with 56.6 million Class B shares and 51.1% of voting power ahead of the IPO. He said in a letter to investors that it was time for Figma to buck the “trend of many amazing companies staying privately indefinitely.”
Databricks, SpaceX and Stripe are among high-valued companies that are still private.
“Some of the obvious benefits such as good corporate hygiene, brand awareness, liquidity, stronger currency and access to capital markets apply,” he wrote, explaining the decision. “More importantly, I like the idea of our community sharing in the ownership of Figma — and the best way to accomplish this is through public markets.”
Field added that as a public company, investors should “expect us to take big swings,” including through acquisitions. In April Figma bought the assets and team of an unnamed technology company for $14 million, according to the filing.
The IPO will also mark another much-needed win for Silicon Valley venture firms, which are in need of returns after the multi-year slump. Index Ventures is the largest outside shareholder, with a 17% stake before the offering, according to the filing. Greylock owns 16%, Kleiner Perkins controls 14% and Sequoia has a stake of 8.7%.
Figma said it faces “intense competition” and that loss of market share would “adversely affect our business,” but didn’t name any specific competitors.
Over 13 million people use Figma per month, and only one-third of them are designers, according to the filing. In March the company announced Figma Sites, a tool that turns designs into working websites. It’s one of a few new products that diversify the company away from its collaborative service for crafting app and website designs.
As of March 31, Figma had $1.54 billion in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities.
Using its cash, Figma has begun investing in digital currencies. In 2024, Figma’s board authorized a $55 million investment into a Bitwise Bitcoin exchange-traded fund. As of March 31, the holding was worth $69.5 million, according to the filing. In May, the board approved a $30 million investment in Bitcoin, and Figma spent the money on USD Coin, which is a stablecoin.
Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are leading the deal along with Allen and Co. and JPMorgan Chase.
Correction: A prior version of this story had the incorrect stock exchange in the headline.
— CNBC’s Ari Levy and Jonathan Vanian contributed to this report.
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