Fingerprint scanners may seem a little more commonplace now with smartphones, but they’re still not a widely used technology in laptops, let alone Chromebooks. That could be changing soon as it’s suggested that the upcoming Chromebook that is currently being referred to as ‘Eve’ could have an integrated fingerprint scanner to allow for unlocking the device, and that it would be the first Chromebook to carry this hardware feature. With a fingerprint scanner, users would of course be able to log in to their Chromebooks without having to type in a password. If the name Eve sounds familiar, it’s also suggested to be the first Chromebook that will be powered by a Kaby Lake processor.
The details that point to Even coming with a fingerprint scanner were found over on Chromium, where a particular commit references enabling the FPC1020 driver, which is a specific type of fingerprint touch sensor. Since the reference comes from a Chromium commit, there is always the chance that a fingerprint scanner won’t be used. There is no way to know how close to a launch Eve is, and if it’s not particularly close to a release then that leaves plenty of room for changes to be made and the fingerprint scanner could be left out entirely. All that said, this should be exciting news for Chromebook enthusiasts or anyone who might be considering a first-time Chromebook in the future that prefers to have a fingerprint scanner as part of the device’s security measures.
For those that aren’t particularly excited about the inclusion of fingerprint readers on Chromebooks, there are Chromebooks beyond the Samsung Chromebook Pro that are coming with stylus support, which means more productivity focused usability and and likely more apps for Chromebooks which can make use of a stylus. For anyone who has never used a Chromebook before, new Chromebooks launched next year might be the best time to jump in as Chromebooks and the Chrome OS platform in general are starting to get more robust. There is still too little known about Eve other than the few details which have been discovered thus far, so it’s important to remember that nothing is official until it’s actually made official by an announcement.