A report from The Korean Herald claims that Samsung is not looking to adopt fingerprint scanners in its products until the second half of next year, as the company considers the technology is still in its nascent stages. An unnamed Samsung official is quoted as saying: “We never officially admitted that Samsung was weighing the fingerprint system and Knox for Galaxy Note 3 for security functions. We are not yet developing the technology.”
According to the report, one of the main reasons behind Samsung's reluctance to use fingerprint scanners is that the only company developing fingerprint tech in Korea – Crucialtec – doesn't have anything to offer that is as good and stable as Authentec, the company that Apple bought last year for developing the fingerprint sensor on the iPhone 5s (which aren't very advanced either, as a hacking group recently proved), and that it will take almost a year before it can push out any stable solution.
Traces of fingerprint-related files in both the Galaxy S3 and the Note III suggest that Samsung is toying around with the idea of implementing fingerprint recognition in its devices, but it looks like infant technology is holding them back for the moment. This makes the prospect of a fingerprint scanner on the Galaxy S5 unlikely, but hey, no one's stopping Samsung from surprising us all, right?