Upcoming Apple Watch models unlikely to add Touch ID, focus on battery life

Apple is prioritizing bigger batteries and more advanced health sensors over fingerprint authentication for the Apple Watch, according to a new claim from a prominent Chinese leaker.

In a new post on Weibo, Instant Digital pushed back on recent speculation about biometric recognition in Apple’s wearable product line, saying instead that the company is content to allow users to unlock their devices through their paired iPhone.

Adding Touch ID sensors would incur additional costs and eat up valuable internal space that could otherwise be used for battery capacity, which is a tradeoff Apple is apparently unwilling to make at this point, the leaker suggests.

Last August, Woozad confirmed lines of code discovered by Macmonde which suggested that Touch ID could come to the Apple Watch Series 12 or Apple Watch Ultra 4. This discovery led to suggestions that Apple could place the Touch ID sensor under the display or potentially integrate it into the side button, similar to its implementation on the iPad mini and iPad Air.

As it stands, the 2026 Apple Watch models aren’t expected to feature any major design changes, and a design update is unlikely to happen until 2028 at the earliest. When it does, Apple may introduce non-invasive blood sugar monitoring technology, but that feature is currently in the early stages of development.