HMD Global recently sent out an update for the Nokia 9 PureView that was to fix the fingerprint sensor. But it appears to have made it even worse.
With this update, users are now able to use chewing gum and unlock the device with someone else’s fingerprint. It’s sort of similar to how you can spoof the facial recognition on a lot of phones with a picture of someone, but it’s much worse.
Twitter user Decoded Pixel posted a video showing how you can do this. Take a pack of chewing gum and place it on the fingerprint sensor and it’ll unlock. Just a pack of gum, no need to actually take the gum out and stick it to the phone. Which that itself is pretty insane, and embarrassing. But the video also shows a totally different person being able to unlock the phone with their fingerprint. This essentially reduces the fingerprint sensor to being useless.
Fingerprint sensors are not perfect, this is something that we all know. But, they are usually a lot more secure than this in-display sensor on the Nokia 9 PureView is right now. The update was supposed to make it easier to unlock the phone, well it did succeed in that regard. But it was supposed to reduce the sensitivity and speed it up. That way users wouldn’t need to press down so hard on the phone to unlock the phone. But now, just about anyone can unlock the phone with their fingerprint, even when it’s not registered.
HMD Global hasn’t said anything in regards to this issue, other than the fact that there will be an update soon to fix this issue. The thing is, we are unsure when that update is actually going to be available. Hopefully HMD Global is able to put this update out pretty quickly, since the fingerprint sensor is useless now and should be disabled.
If you have been using the in-display fingerprint sensor on the Nokia 9 PureView, and have gotten this update, it’s a good idea to turn off that fingerprint sensor. The sensor is very insecure right now, and if you lose your phone, anyone would be able to unlock it, which is not a good thing, and it means that your data on that phone is not secure at all. It’s going to make things a bit more difficult for unlocking your phone hundreds of times a day, but at least your data will be safe with the fingerprint sensor turned off, and resorting to using a PIN or password on your phone.
In-display fingerprint sensors have notoriously been pretty bad. However, the Nokia 9 PureView’s fingerprint sensor was by far one of the worst at launch. Many were complaining about how hard they have to press down on the phone’s screen, as well as how slow it was, and the fact that it could be pretty inaccurate. Nokia was pushing out an update to fix this, but it somehow made the fingerprint sensor even worse. Hopefully this next update will fix it for good.