There's a reason people are eagerly awaiting the iPhone SE 2: it heralds a new era of the best low-cost features for iOS and iPhone. But people also liked the original iPhone SE home button, and with it, Touch ID. The upcoming "iPhone Spring 2020", which is presumed to be the iPhone SE 2, will keep the home button, according to Evan Blass, and we have little reason to doubt it. But would Apple allow one of its new phones to have a low-tech authentication method, given its investment in facial recognition with Face ID? In the absence of Intel and a strong track record for Blass, we'd be skeptical. It's true that Apple still produces the iPhone 8, which has a home button, but this device debuted in 2017 and is currently selling it as a budget model. But it's very likely that Apple will replace the 8 with this new iPhone SE 2 (or whatever it's called), which means the company has pretty much a clean slate. Apple has chosen not to develop in-display fingerprint sensors, unlike all flagship Android phones that compete with the major iPhones, and relies on Face ID for all of its authentication. So, honestly, we doubt Apple will allow the iPhone SE 2 to have both Face ID and Touch ID. Because it would give consumers what they really want.
Apple philosophy: design for what you dream of tomorrow, not what you want today
Apple's longstanding philosophy of designing products that consumers will want once they see them, not designing for what consumers say they want, still feels like a guiding principle. This is marked by the company's successes, from mimicking and improving the Xerox graphical interface and mouse with the Macintosh in the 1980s to promoting the near-full-screen iPhone in 2007. The oft-quoted quote from Steve Jobs: "Our job is to understand what they are going to want before they do" seems to characterize Apple's resistance to bowing to the wishes of customers. For years, the company has ignored calls for a move to the USB-C port (iPhone), not just USB-C ports (MacBook), and longer battery life (Apple Watch). So I'd be reluctant to assume that Apple would allow the iPhone SE 2 to have both Touch ID and Face ID, as consumers have wanted for years. Rationally, there's a reason Apple is resisting a return to fingerprint authentication, even though many apps still allow it to cater more to older iPhone and iPad owners: They're not going back to their technology. Think of the company's bold choices: ditch the disc player in the original iMac, ditch the 3.5mm headphone jack on the iPhone 7, and ditch the CD-ROM on the MacBook Air. Apple's reputation rests on the safe choice of technology excises to force the transition to a generally new data transmission standard. In this case, that data is your biometric password, and Apple has little reason to satisfy the consumer if its ecosystem struggles to rely solely on facial recognition, with fewer touchscreen devices supporting almost every yearly OS update for its device family.
A commitment?
True, there is ONE compromise that represents the first for Blass's iPhone SE 2, but that seems confusing: Allow a home button, but don't give it Touch ID. Seems like more complicated than it's worth - Apple's production lines producing Touch ID home buttons for older iPhones and iPads could surely be repurposed to remove fingerprint ID - but SE 2's goal is to split up more of the market budget. Fingerprint sensors are found in cheap phones because they are cheaper. We'd love to be wrong, especially since the iPhone SE 2 goes a bit against Apple's strategy of raising phone prices anyway. If the new phone really embraces a budget design with Touch ID, well, couldn't we see the return of other long-lost features? Apple would finally bow to the wishes of consumers? We'll have to wait for the iPhone SE 2 launch, which is rumored to be in early 2020, to find out.- If Apple doesn't release the iPhone SE 2 anytime soon, here are the best iPhones for good measure