Pixel 6a’s fingerprint scanner seems to have a major issue

Pranob Mehrotra

XDA Developers


Pixel 6a’s fingerprint scanner seems to have a major issue

Shortly after Google launched the Pixel 6 series last year, we saw reports about users facing issues with the fingerprint scanner on both models. While some claimed that the fingerprint scanner on the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro felt sluggish compared to other flagships, others said that it just refused to work sometimes. Google tried to address the issue with various software updates for the devices, but it achieved limited success. The company seems to have made some changes to avoid this issue on the recently released Pixel 6a, but new reports suggest that the Pixel 6a’s fingerprint scanner has another major problem.

In our review of the Pixel 6a, we found that the in-display fingerprint scanner on the device wasn’t much faster than the one on the flagship models. But that doesn’t seem to be the only fingerprint scanner issue on the affordable handset. Recent videos from Geekyranjit and Beebom (via Android Police) highlight that the Pixel 6a can be unlocked with an unregistered fingerprint. The former shows the device unlocking with an unregistered thumb, while the latter presents evidence of multiple users unlocking the device without registering their fingerprints.

This new issue is far more concerning than the slow fingerprint scanner on Google’s flagship models. But, since the Pixel 6a is yet to make its way to users, we haven’t seen many reports about the issue. Google has not released a statement on the matter so far, but we expect the company to release a software update with a fix before the Pixel 6a reaches early buyers.

Note that we were not able to replicate the issue on our Pixel 6a review unit and the folks at Android Police did not face the issue either. This leads us to believe that the problem could be limited to regional variants of the device. However, we can’t confirm that at the moment.

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