A flaw is found on the Samsung Galaxy S10, which allows unregistered fingerprints to unlock the phone. The company says it's aware of the issue and a fix should be coming soon.
Last week, a Samsung Galaxy S10 owner found that her left thumb could also unlock the phone, but she'd only added the right thumb. It started happening after she applied a third-party screen protector to the phone. It was then tried on other S10's as well, and all of them confirmed the issue.
Samsung was quick to acknowledge this bug and issued a statement, promising a fix soon. It added that only "Samsung authorized" accessories should be used. In a statement to BBC, Samsung said that it is aware of the malfunctioning fingerprint issue and will soon roll out a software patch.
Unlike other in-display fingerprint scanning solutions, Samsung uses an ultrasonic fingerprint scanner on the S10 and the Note10. It allows fingers to be recognized even if they are wet or soiled. However, a thick screen protector will meddle with this scanning process, and that is likely to be the case here.
What should the S10 users do?
The issue currently seems limited to only a few screen protectors, and shouldn't be long before Samsung fixes even that. In the meanwhile, if you need to use a screen protector on your Samsung flagship, go for slimmer plastic ones, or continue using the pre-applied one.
Also, we would recommend you change the unlock procedure to another security method until Samsung releases a fix for the issue.
