Google has made fingerprint scanner support in Android official, but of course we knew that was coming. The Nexus 6 was supposed to have a fingerprint reader, but now future Android devices will be able to reap the benefits of native biometrics. This will be used for accessing the device, of course, but that's not all.

On Android M devices with fingerprint readers (i.e. probably the upcoming Nexus phones), a tap on the reader can unlock the phone. When the time comes to use Android Pay, you can verify your identity with the fingerprint reader too.

Developers can also plug into the fingerprint API to allow secure log-ins and other features. Samsung's fingerprint readers are currently the closest thing to a universal biometric API on Android, but hopefully the native Android support takes off... eventually. That will have to wait until M is on some phones.