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.
Partiful’s CEO, Shreya Murthy, and CTO, Joy Tao
Courtesy: Partiful
When Shreya Murthy and Joy Tao decided to launch a party-planning startup in 2020, they settled on a business goal of “bringing people together in person.”
The Covid-19 pandemic demanded the exact opposite.
Despite the challenge of the pandemic, Partiful survived, and five years later, the New York startup is now used by millions of people to plan events such as birthday parties, housewarmings and weddings.
The app’s a favorite of those ages 20 to 30, and it’s added 2 million new users since January, Partiful CEO Murthy told CNBC. The company has never revealed its exact base of monthly users.
Partiful drew attention on social media after Apple, known for replicating features from popular apps on the iPhone, launched its own event-planning service in February, and the startup posted a joke about “copycats” on its X account.
Of course, Partiful isn’t the first party-planning app. It competes against not only Apple Invites, but also Eventbrite, Evite, Punchbowl and others.
Each service differs slightly in its target markets and features. Evite, for example, uses a “freemium” model, where certain invitation designs and other features are paywalled. Eventbrite is often used to promote and sell admission to large public events.
What sets Partiful apart from its competitors — and appeals to its Gen Z user base — is its often humorous, casual designs, some of which are created by Partiful’s in-house designers.
“Friend invited me to a gathering that doesn’t have a Partiful….feeling lost, confused, unprepared…much like when I (Gen Z) receive a phone call out of the blue,” X user Athena Kan posted in August.
For the first quarter of 2025, Partiful averaged 500,000 monthly active users, up 400% year over year, with 9 out of 10 users on the app based in the U.S., according to estimates provided to CNBC by Sensor Tower, a market research firm. That compares with Eventbrite’s 4.4 million monthly active users, which is up 2% year over year, and Punchbowl with approximately 85,000 monthly users, which is down about 2% compared to a year ago. A spokesperson for Evite told CNBC that the service saw more than 20 million monthly active users for the first quarter of 2025.
It’s unclear how many people still use Facebook’s once-popular event-planning feature Facebook Events. Facebook’s parent company, Meta, shut down the standalone app.
Sample invitations from the Partiful app
Source: Partiful
Bringing people together in real life
Murthy and Tao both went to Princeton University and worked at Palantir Technologies at the same time, but they didn’t meet until they were introduced later by a mutual friend. Both were looking to move to the consumer-facing side of tech.
Tao, then a software engineer at Meta, wanted to leave the company to focus on products that were more relatable to daily life, and said that the social media company’s goal of keeping users engaged on their apps sometimes can create “perverse incentives.”
“For me, driving more people to spend more time staring at their phone, staring at this endless feed of content, wasn’t super motivating, wasn’t super meaningful to me personally,” said Tao, Partiful’s tech chief and a self-described “avid party planner.”
Meta declined to comment.
Tao and Murthy went through a sort of “dating period” where they asked each other what they thought leading a startup together could look like. Among the voids they identified was how intimate social events, such as birthday parties where a host would be likely to see the attendees again, were still planned on text chains that made it difficult to track, communicate or plan an ideal event time with guests.
“If you’re not sure when people are free, that’s a really annoying problem,” Murthy said.
She and Tao took the leap.
With few in-person events happening during the 2020 lockdowns, Partiful’s engineering team focused on building the platform’s text message-based infrastructure so that the service could be used by both iPhone and Android users.
Partiful’s team, which has now grown to 25, operates out of downtown Brooklyn. The service is no longer limited to text messages and its website. The company launched apps for the iPhone and Android devices in 2023 and 2024, respectively, and Partiful now serves as a one-stop destination for organizing the different phases of planning and hosting a party. The company has reportedly raised $20 million in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz.
Speaking Gen Z’s language
What makes Partiful fun for users is how customizable an invite can be.
Hosts can create a free birthday invite with a lime-green parody cover of Charli XCX’s “brat” album, for example, or plan a girls’ night out with a cover photo of Shrek in sunglasses. They can track “yes,” “no” or “maybe” RSVPs under a portrait of Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg, and invited guests can use a “boop” feature to send random emojis rather than a direct message to each other.
Party planners can also send out uniform text blasts to the group before and after the event and manage an in-app photo album for uploading memories.
Partiful is available for anyone to use, but Murthy said the company sees the most need for the service among young users in the “postgrad” period of life. That’s a stage where people might be moving to new cities and away from their established college friend groups.
“You’re starting your adult life and have to not only figure out, ‘How do I rent an apartment? How do I work a new job? How do I exist in this new version of myself?'” Murthy said. “On top of that, you’re also having to rebuild your entire social circle.”
For the hosts and partiers in its user base, Partiful has become part of their social routine, and it has continued to gain traction online. The company told CNBC that over 60% of its active app users check Partiful every week.
As for Apple, Partiful isn’t sweating its new rival just yet.
Apple Invites requires that users have an iCloud+ subscription to create events, though it’s free to RSVP if a guest doesn’t have an Apple account. That service starts at 99 cents a month in the United States. Apple did not respond to a request for comment.
Partiful is free, at least for now.
Like many other tech companies that rely on distribution services such as Apple’s App Store, Partiful has a nuanced relationship with its much-larger counterpart. Partiful could lose some users to Apple, but it can also benefit from promotion by the app distributor.
That’s what happened in 2024, when Partiful was named a finalist for Apple’s App Store Awards for Cultural Impact, and won Google Play’s “Best App of 2024.” The app remained an “editor’s choice” pick on the App Store as of publication.
For now, Partiful remains confident.
“We haven’t really seen any users that have been leaving Partiful for Apple Invites,” Murthy said.
WATCH: Why iPhones may get more expensive amid Trump tariffs
An attendee wearing a Super Mario costume uses a Nintendo Switch 2 game console while playing a video game during the Nintendo Switch 2 Experience at the ExCeL London international exhibition and convention centre in London, Britain, April 11, 2025.
Isabel Infantes | Reuters
Nintendo on Friday announced that retail preorder for its Nintendo Switch 2 gaming system will begin on April 24 starting at $449.99.
Preorders for the hotly anticipated console were initially slated for April 9, but Nintendo delayed the date to assess the impact of the far-reaching, aggressive “reciprocal” tariffs that President Donald Trump announced earlier this month.
Most electronics companies, including Nintendo, manufacture their products in Asia. Nintendo’s Switch 1 consoles were made in China and Vietnam, Reuters reported in 2019. Trump has imposed a 145% tariff rate on China and a 10% rate on Vietnam. The latter is down from 46%, after he instituted a 90-day pause to allow for negotiations.
Nintendo said Friday that the Switch 2 will cost $449.99 in the U.S., which is the same price the company first announced on April 2.
“We apologize for the retail pre-order delay, and hope this reduces some of the uncertainty our consumers may be experiencing,” Nintendo said in a statement. “We thank our customers for their patience, and we share their excitement to experience Nintendo Switch 2 starting June 5, 2025.”
The Nintendo Switch 2 and “Mario Kart World“ bundle will cost $499.99, the digital version “Mario Kart World” will cost $79.99 and the digital version of “Donkey Kong Bananza” will cost $69.99, Nintendo said. All of those prices remain unchanged from the company’s initial announcement.
However, accessories for the Nintendo Switch 2 will “experience price adjustments,” the company said, and other future changes in costs are possible for “any Nintendo product.”
It will cost gamers $10 more to by the dock set, $1 more to buy the controller strap and $5 more to buy most other accessories, for instance.
WATCH: Nintendo has ‘a lot of work to do’ to convince casual users to upgrade to Switch 2: Kantan Games
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