When rumors started floating around the internets about the next iPhone shipping with a fingerprint sensor, hardly anyone believed them. But sure enough, when Tim Cook and friends got up on stage to unveil the iPhone 5s, there it was, the circle where you put your thumb to unlock your phone. Shortly after that announcement, a Samsung official was quoted as saying the company isn’t interested in the technology, and that we probably won’t see a Galaxy with a fingerprint sensor until H2 2014. Was that just talk?

According to a new rumor from the Korean publication ET News, apparently Samsung wanted to put a fingerprint sensor on the Galaxy Note 3, but they changed their mind at the last minute. The new goal is to get a phone out on the market by the end of this year with a scanner. Could it be a variant of the Note 3? I haven’t got the slightest idea. Knowing Samsung, it could be a variant of damn near anything. Also knowing Samsung, it could be a device that’ll never get sold outside South Korea.

What has to happen for fingerprint technology to come to Android? That’s an easy one to answer, it needs to be supported by Android at the system level. The last thing anyone wants is for Samsung, HTC, Sony, whoever, to each write their own proprietary fingerprint stacks, each with their own respective security bugs, each with their own API that developers would have to support.

Total. Nightmare. Scenario.