At the 2018 Made by Google Event, Google debuted the Google Pixel Slate with new-to-Chrome-OS fingerprint support. Before that device has even had the chance to launch, it seems two more upcoming devices are gaining the same capability.

Google was proud to debut fingerprint support for Chrome OS on their new hardware, but it was never confirmed whether the feature would be a Google Pixel Slate exclusive. We had suspected that it could be, based on the visuals used with the new fingerprint support very clearly depicting what we now know is the Pixel Slate.

It seems however, that fingerprint unlocking will become a common new feature for premium Chromebooks. A new commit in Chromium’s Gerrit source code management shows the first sign of two more devices gaining the support. The two models, Ekko and Bard, may actually even use the same underlying fingerprint hardware and software used in the Pixel Slate.

Under the hood, both models are based on the Nami baseboard, used by the latest high-end Chromebooks developed by Dell and Lenovo. This will allow the devices to use Intel’s 8th Generation Kaby Lake U processors. Having only been in development since early last month, we’re not likely to see either of these models debut until next year. Beyond that, there’s not much we can tell from the information available.

9to5Google’s Take

Honestly, fingerprint recognition is a sensible addition to any platform with even a semblance of mobility. I hope that it’s as well executed on Chrome OS as it currently is on Android.

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