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Android 16 now lets all Pixel phones use fingerprint unlock even when the screen is off
(www.androidauthority.com)
Mine does that now, and I'm on 13?
this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2025
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Oh yeah, that's right.
I'm on Android 10 and it does that. And the phone originally shipped with Android 9, and it did that too even before the upgrade.
Ain't that cute, they act like they did a thing...
What?
I have a T-Mobile Revvlry+ phone that's like 7 years old and it does that. Matter of fact, the power button is starting to fail now, so that's exactly how I wake my phone up, the fingerprint sensor.
Why don't they just pat themselves on the back and act like they invented the wheel?
The wording is a bit weird, but I'll try to explain what's actually happening here;
This is referring to the pixel's under screen fingerprint reader. Since it's an optical reader, it needs light to see what it's reading so it blasts a white circle around the reader. Currently if the screen is off (we'll get back to this in a sec) then it can't turn this circle on to read the finger. Basically there's an "off" and a "black" with oleds, they'll look identical, but If the screen is "off" you won't be able to light up a section. This can occur when the always-on-display is active, but not if it's disabled. From what I gather this leaves the display in an "black" state so it can still light up the reader, even if AOD is disabled
Also totally accidentally sent this when trying to check the MD ob "off", hopefully you haven't checked this message yet lol
Okay, gotcha.
I do prefer a separate fingerprint sensor though, but yeah I'm aware that on-screen fingerprint sensors are a thing now.
And I don't trust that, for what should be pretty obvious reasons.
I've never had a phone that had one mounted anywhere other than the front, so under screen was natural muscle memory progression for me compared to side or back mounted.
I am curious of what you dont trust and why
You're always touching your screen, which means that random apps can capture your fingerprint too.
Yes, some third party apps out there scan the fingerprint sensor too. If the sensor is on the screen, then any random app can detect your fingerprint at any given time.
My phone has a dedicated sensor on the back, so if any random app wants my fingerprint, I can just uninstall that particular app without having to worry that it's scanning my fingerprint every single time I touch the screen.
Ah I see the concern there. Fingerprint data isn't handled as much on the software side as it is through the hardware. Android doesn't get access to what's actually scanned, just whether a scan was read and if it matched what the reader was expecting, Scanners are limited to a certain number of entries depending on how much space is available to store fingerprint data, which is why my 256gb phone can only store 4 fingers. It's also why you can't add separate fingers in separate apps, they all use android's API to determine whether a biometric scan was a success or not.
Really? Really?
My phone only has 64GB storage, and it allows 5 fingerprints. Hell, I just added one of my toes as a test to confirm.
You got a device with 256GB, and they subtracted a fingerprint? What the fuck?
New devices will remove features, and you'll fucking like it...
Tradeoff between speed & accuracy vs the amount of fingerprints. The data that would've been required to store a 5th is instead used to have better models of the other 4. Id rather have a faster reader that'll read it right in more angles than an extra fingerprint when I only really use my thumb and index anyway. (Also you can totally train 2 different fingers in one "finger" and it'll recognize both, just worse
It literally took me less than 0.1 seconds to unlock my 7 year old phone with my toe.
How impatient are you? FFS, the technology has been out there and pretty well refined for decades.