BUYERS of Google’s latest smartphone are fuming after discovering a major fault with the £600 device within weeks of launch.
According to multiple reports on online forums, if the Google Pixel 6 runs out of battery, its fingerprint sensor is permanently disabled.
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The feature is a primary way of unlocking the handset and also provides an additional layer of security for banking apps and other software.
And according to posts on Reddit, it goes kaput when the phone completely runs out of battery.
The issue affects both the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro smartphones. Apparently, only putting the devices through a factory reset will fix the problem.
One Reddit user moaned: “The fingerprint scanner on my Pixel 6 Pro was working fine until last night when I ran out of battery.
“After plugging it in to charge and going through entering my pin once, I noticed that the icon for fingerprint scanner stopped showing up on the screen.
“Now I’m stuck with entering the pin every time that I want to unlock the device.”
Apparently, the poster went into settings and found that the fingerprint profile they had enrolled when they set up the phone had disappeared.
When they attempted to set it up again, the device captures the fingerprint but upon completion shows an error message warning that enrolment “didn’t work”.
They said that trying to enrol using a different finger – and even someone else’s finger – returned similar results.
In response to the post, people said they were also experiencing problems with the high-tech sensor.
One commented: “I’m having the same issue, battery died and restarted to no fingerprints and can’t re-enroll them.”
Another said: “Same thing happened with me right now, my phone ran out of battery and now I cannot use the fingerprint scanner.”
They added: “I can confirm that factory resetting the device fixes the fingerprint scanner.”
Their accounts were corroborated by reports on Google’s own issue tracker forums.
It’s a significant bug for a mobile that’s been on shelves for weeks now.
The Sun understands that Google is aware of the issue and dealing with it internally.
Typically, glitches like this are easily fixed with a software update rolled out by the maker of the operating system – in this case, Google.
Fans can almost certainly expect an urgent update to roll out in the coming days.
Google launched the Pixel 6 range on October 19. The Pixel 6 starts at £599/$599, while the Pixel 6 Pro sets buyers back at least £849/$899.
Both phones come with a Google-built chip and the latest Android 12 software.
Reviewers have praised the pair’s camera systems and reasonable price tags while lamenting their dodgy battery capacities and slow fingerprint scanners.
The Sun has reached out to Google for comment.
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In other news, iPhone owners in the UK have had a £750 payout from Google snatched from them by the UK’s highest court.
Google Chrome users are being warned to delete the browser amid fears highly sensitive data is being harvested.
Facebook has announced that it’s changing its name to “Meta”.
The company is working to create lifelike avatars of its users that they can control in a virtual world called the “metaverse”.
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