Asus has announced the company’s ZenFone 2 line of devices back in January, and the 4GB version of Asus ZenFone 2 is the company’s latest flagship smartphone. Despite the fact that Asus is not necessarily being known for their smartphones, it is a very capable device. But, while the device has great specs and a decent look about it, it is missing something that most high-end smartphones are adopting these days, a fingerprint reader. But now it looks like Asus hopes to change that with their upcoming smartphones, possibly as soon as the second half of this year.
This information comes directly from the mouth of Asus CEO Jerry Shen. He told the press today that Asus plans to incorporate fingerprint readers in their upcoming smartphones, although he gave no exact devices or dates. But, with a refresh to the ZenFone 2 getting ready to be released later this year, a fingerprint reader makes sense there. Slightly beefing up the specs of a device but keeping everything else the same would not make sense, Asus would need to include something more to draw potential buyers in. This is why the fingerprint reader would make sense for this device.
Even though Asus is planning to incorporate fingerprint readers in their devices, that is only half the battle. The other half of the battle is making said fingerprint readers actually secure and reliable. Nobody wants to use a fingerprint reader that they have to try three times before it finally works, every time. Nor does anybody want a fingerprint reader that is easily tricked and hacked. So far, Apple and Samsung are the only two smartphone manufacturers that have done this right. Apple, starting with the iPhone 5, got fingerprint readers down perfectly. Samsung, with their recently released Samsung Galaxy S6 and Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge devices, finally got fingerprint readers right as well.
So, the big question is, which Asus smartphone will receive a fingerprint reader first? Will it be the refreshed ZenFone 2 later this year or the ZenFone 3 that will likely be released early next year? At the moment, there is really no sure way to answer that question but we can take an educated guess with the information at hand. That information points right at the refreshed ZenFone 2 for the reasons we mentioned above but again, this is just a guess. Now all we can do is play the waiting game, balls in your court Asus.