Out of nowhere, there’s this news regarding the Galaxy S10 being able to be unlocked via the fingerprint reader by anyone’s fingers. The Sun was the one who first published this, and had the discoverer of the said issue to explain and show the problem.
The original article from The Sun is very problematic as they seemingly use the terms “cover” and “screen protector” interchangeably.
The ones who discovered this issue were Wes and Lisa. Wes, the husband of Lisa, bought her a new Galaxy S10 and also bought a “gel cover” to protect her phone – as many of us will do. When Wes tried unlocking the phone via the fingerprint scanner, it worked! This shouldn’t work, but it did.
Lisa also added that her sister’s Samsung phone also behaves the same when “fitted with the case”. I never knew screen protectors were hot-swappable?
So far, Samsung has said that they’re investigating this internally and will issue a fix when it is ready. And rightfully so too, since having the ability to bypass fingerprint lock is a security risk – particularly to banking apps (Maybank, etc).
However, I want to pull back and question the original article and what was shown by The Sun. Firstly, the couple never showed the case that caused the issue. Is it a case or a screen protector, or a case that wraps around the screen? From the looks of it, it is a case that wraps around the screen.
Even the demonstration of this issue is not good enough. The couple should have deleted all registered fingerprints, re-add Lisa’s finger, then unlock with Wes’s finger. That is the complete demonstration from A-Z. The reason for this is because there are some people who switch fingers during fingerprint registration so multiple fingers are detected as “one” finger by the phone.
Lastly, I presume this “gel case” is made out of TPU material. I’m personally already using a TPU screen protector on my Galaxy S10+ for months… and I have never encountered such an issue. So how does this work again? Perhaps Lisa and Wes should demonstrate the whole thing again on a new unit of the Galaxy S10 on camera so we can know exactly what and how it happened.
Or….. Lisa could have enrolled the fingerprint scanner with that “gel case” installed, and the scanner is reading the case as a finger instead. It’s possible.
Anyway, until Samsung issues a fix – and they will, it is advised to disable the fingerprint scanner on your Galaxy S10 smartphones now.
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