Sony Raises Eyebrows After Writing Off Fingerprint Scanner In Phones; Possible Result Of A Bilateral Deal With The US?

The fingerprint reader has emerged to be one of the factors that potential smartphone buyers take into consideration when picking which phone to get. While Sony is one of the smartphone industry's leaders, it has an issue with its fingerprint scanner, which disappoints many of its fans. This is because ever since the Xperia Z5 family was launched, a number of models were built with a fingerprint scanner embedded in the power button on the side. Unfortunately, those devices ended up with disabled readers when they came out in the US.

GSM Arena reports that the issue with Sony has sprouted many other issues. Some say that the new XZ Premium and MXs are joining in and are doing away with the biometric security measure in the US. This is questionable considering that many of its rivals have working fingerprint scanners. In fact, scanner responsiveness has already been a point of comparison in most flagships.

When asked to comment on the matter, Sony wrote off its decision to do away with it as a pure market decision. This could spell out the lack of interest in that particular feature in a specific region. However, fans are persistent that this was just to save face and that there is actually a deeper reason why this feature was written off.

Android Central spoke with Don Mesa, the head of marketing for North America for Sony Mobile US, who said that there are a lot of factors both internal and external that worked together to arrive at this decision. Sony has been consistent in upholding that such is a feature that has no demand, but Mesa vaguely justified that such was a conscious decision. He added that it had something largely to do with them wanting to continue their business in the US.

It has to be noted that Sony is shipping phones to the US with sensors that are physically working but are disabled by software. The deal to omit such feature was made specifically for the US market. Whatever their reasons are, it looks like those in the US who have been worshipping the brand since time immemorial are unaffected by this.