Whether we’re talking about facial recognition or fingerprint sensor technology, the thing smartphone users care about most when unlocking their devices is speed. That said, the ultrasonic fingerprint sensor on Samsung’s new Galaxy S10 smartphones left a lot to be desired.
Embedded into the display itself, the fingerprint sensor, while admittedly cool, was plagued with all sorts of problems early on. Aside from successful efforts to fool the sensor, users complained that the feature was unreliable far too often. What’s more, even when the device accurately recognized an authorized user, the unlocking speed was said to be frustratingly slow.
In an effort to address these basic usability concerns, Samsung earlier today started rolling out a software update that promises to make the S10’s fingerprint sensor technology more reliable, faster, and in a nutshell, usable.
The update is rather small — weighing in at just 6.9MB — and according to early reports from S10 users, the update significantly improves the speed and reliability of the fingerprint sensor.
Of course, the update likely won’t do anything to curb malicious efforts to fool the fingerprint sensor. If you recall, someone a few days ago managed to use a 3D printer to whip up a fake fingerprint and access an S10 device. The entire process is explained here, but to be brief, a user took a high quality photo of his fingerprint from a wine glass, put it into Photoshop, and then used some 3D printing software which spit out a good enough copy of his print in just 13 minutes flat.
