HTC jumps on the biometrics bandwagon

New leaked images of HTC’s upcoming phablet show that Apple has put its finger on the pulse of another upcoming smartphone trend.

New leaked images of HTC's upcoming phablet show that Apple has put its finger on the pulse of another upcoming smartphone trend.

The HTC One Max, as it is currently being called in the tech press at least, is expected to sport a whopping 6.3-inch full HD display, a pretty meaty processor -- it will need to be with all of that screen real estate to manage -- and a gargantuan battery for the same reasons. But the latest pictures, which cropped up on Chinese microblogging site Sina Weibo and was first caught by Dutch site mobileaks over the weekend, show that it is also going to have a rear-mounted fingerprint reader, just below the rear-facing camera lens.

If the scanner makes it onto the finished phone -- which is expected to launch in October -- it will become the third handset launched this year to sport biometric authentication.

In August, South Korean phonemaker Pantech launched the Vega LTE-A. Aimed specifically at its domestic market, it sports a fingerprint scanner under the camera and, of course, earlier this month, Apple too debuted a new phone with a fingerprint reader.

The latest iPhone is by no means the first smartphone to feature a fingerprint scanner in the past decade, yet alone the current year, but when Apple adds a feature or a service, that's the surest indication that it is ready for consumers and that there is a clear need for the benefits or features it provides. And that benefit is tighter, simpler security. The average consumer is about to collapse under the weight of the individual passwords and log-ins he or she is expected to remember on a daily basis. By replacing a passcode or password with biometric authentication, all consumers now have ten unique, impossible to guess passcodes literally at their fingertips.