Apple's Budget iPhone 5C Might Be Getting A Fingerprint Scanner

Apple's inexpensive iPhone model, the 5C, might be getting a facelift soon. As spotted by eagle eyes on Reddit, Apple started selling a new dock recently on its website, and in Apple's own product pictures is an iPhone that doesn't exist. The photos depict an iPhone 5C with Apple's TouchID fingerprint scanner.

The current iPhone 5C is the only iPhone Apple currently sells without a fingerprint scanner. The biometric device is one of Apple's main smartphone differentiators. Competitors like Samsung have only started to catch up. Plus, a fingerprint scanner is essential for Apple Pay, Apple's contactless payment system, and one of the company's big pushes in the past year. So it's logical that Apple would want its entire iPhone lineup to have the new home button.

Of course, this could be a red herring. The photos that Apple uses on its website are often highly altered or rendered, and it's not hard to imagine a hapless designer accidentally pasting the wrong home button on a picture of an iPhone. But Apple's own website has leaked unreleased products in the past.

Although the iPhone 5C is Apple's least expensive iPhone, it's not "low-cost" by any measure, costing $450 without a contract. One major question is what happens to the low-end colorful line when the next iPhone comes out this fall. One possibility is that the iPhone 5S, which is currently Apple's mid-level model, will ditch its machined metal shell for the iPhone 5C's plastic body. If that were to happen, it would look a lot like these pictures.