I’ve moved from the Google Pixel 4A, which had an excellent fingerprint sensor on the back of the phone, to the 7A.

I won’t sugarcoat it: in my experience the fingerprint sensor, now an optical sensor on the front of the phone, is near useless. It fails to read my finger/thumb print basically ~95% of the time, which means it can’t be used for any account that may lock the user out following ‘x’ unsuccessful login attempts.

I really don’t get why they shipped the feature with the phone given how unacceptably bad it is to use.

Is this a common opinion shared amongst 7A users? Is there something wrong with my phone, or am I missing something? I’d welcome any advice, as I would quite like to get this working reliably.

  • kiwifoxtrot@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    It works flawlessly for me while I struggled with the 4A fingerprint sensor. With the 4A I could get it to unlock roughly 25% of the time. The 7A doesn’t work as well for my wife.

    I have a theory of why it works so well for me. How oily/ wet are you fingers normally? Can you open a dog poop bag easily? My fingers are very dry and I can’t open a dog poop bag without licking my fingers. My wife can open them no problem at all.

    • spacedogroy@feddit.ukOP
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      1 year ago

      I have to lick my fingers to open those bags (unfortunately - it’s gross 😅) so my current theory is because I have dry hands maybe that’s making it more difficult for the sensor to pick up the prints.

    • jeebs@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Hmm that’s odd. That’s kind of the opposite of what I believed. My fingers are oily and can operate the sensor great. I even saw a website suggesting that if you have trouble with the sensor, to run your finger on the outside of your nose to get it oily to activate the sensor.

      • svcricket@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I’ve had the opposite experience too! I have dry fingers and my experience has been that the fingerprint sensor on the regular Pixel 7 rarely works. Incidentally, I also have trouble opening dog poop bags.

        I miss the face unlock on the Pixel 4.