Many details surrounding the Nexus 6 were leaked in the months leading up to the smartphone’s launch in late October, although one oft-rumored tech specification that proved to be absent was a fingerprint scanner akin to Touch ID on the iPhone. The initial reports calling for a fingerprint scanner weren’t necessarily wrong, however, based on new evidence uncovered in Android’s open source code.
The earliest rumors of the Nexus 6, reported way back in July by Android Police, were pretty spot on. Google and Motorola (check) were building a 5.9-inch phablet (check), codenamed Shamu (check), to be released in November (check). It would target US carriers (yep), run Android L (uh huh), and have a fingerprint sensor (wait what?). That last one didn’t work out—the Nexus 6 never shipped with a fingerprint sensor. That doesn’t really make the report wrong, though. Back when it was written, the Nexus 6 and Lollipop used to have a whole setup for reading fingerprints. The truth out there, you just have to find the needle in the haystack that is the Android Open Source Project.