Samsung's at it again and this time it stole Apple's Face ID icon

By Oliver Haslam
published

Samsung Pass slide with Face ID icon
Samsung Pass slide with Face ID icon (Image credit: iMore)

What you need to know

  • Samsung held a CES keynote yesterday.
  • During the keynote, it threw up a slide explaining Samsung Pass.
  • That slide had what looks to be Apple's Face ID icon on it.

 (opens in new tab)

Samsung and Apple have a complicated history. But in reality, it mostly boils down to Samsung "borrowing" design language and features from Apple and then using them in its phones and tablets. Things aren't as bad as they once were, but yesterday the company showed a slide about Samsung Pass. And on that slide was Apple's Face ID icon.

Now, is it possible that Samsung Pass is coming to iPhone? Will users be able to authenticate using their Face ID-equipped iPhone? That's surely the only answer here, right?

See more

Well, no. Not really. Here's Apple's Face ID icon, for comparison.

Apple Face ID

Apple Face ID (Image credit: iMore)

It seems that Samsung has just ripped off the Face ID icon and called it its own. Because of course it has.

Oliver Haslam
Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.

11 Comments
  • I wish Apple would allow Samsung Pay on the iPhone.
  • Why would they allow it? Google Pay is much more ubiquitous, Samsung Pay was more Samsung doing something just because they could
  • Are you slow? Nobody uses or cares about Google Pay. We use Samsung Pay. Samsung Pay is way better than Google Pay because it works even at places that don't support Samsung Pay. So try again.
  • Good luck trying to reason with Danny. It's useless Latrell, He's in the deep end of the pool....thats filled with Kool-Aid!
  • In any case, I don't think Apple actually stops them making it work on the iPhone, Samsung doesn't want to put it on the iPhone
  • I'm not slow, like I said, Google Pay is much more widely used. It doesn't really make sense why they would allow something with a far smaller userbase, even if you like it. Besides, I don't think Apple actually stops them, I'm pretty sure Samsung just want to make it unique to their phones
  • And what about the fingerprint icon?
  • To be fair the fingerprint icon is just, well, a finger print inside a circle. The Face ID icon has much more distinctive features that didn't need to be copied, like the 4 corners for example
  • Oh my God I can feel all the fanboyism in this post. And of course when Apple copies Samsung like they always do, you guys just pretend as if it didn't happen. Smart.
  • Lemmings over the cliff on this one for sure!
  • The article is not wrong though. There are a million ways to draw a face icon, and Samsung used Apple's instead of making their own.