I say this when Apple does it, and I'll say it now: going from learning of a hardware defect to releasing a fix in 2 weeks is pretty darn impressive.
Having said that, this defect is more ridiculous that any Apple bug/oversight than I can think of.
My assumption is that this can't be as bad as the article implies. Surely I can't walk up to your Samsung phone, add a screen protector and now I can unlock your fingerprint-protected phone, right? It's gotta be that if you have a certain type of protector on when you enroll your fingerprint any finger thereafter will unlock it. Which means that I can't use this vector to attack any phone that didn't start with a bad screen protector. That seems plausible, right?
Yes, that seems plausible. If that's the issue, Samsung's problem was in not requiring some minimum quality level for enrollment of a fingerprint. That's not a hardware defect, that's a rookie level error in important security software. In the past, Apple has fixed software security problems in well under two weeks from discovery. I am not impressed by Samsung in this instance.
Wait, wait, I thought Apple has a monopoly on QA issues.
Statements like that could blowup in your face (or pocket).
I say this when Apple does it, and I'll say it now: going from learning of a hardware defect to releasing a fix in 2 weeks is pretty darn impressive.
A. You are assuming it is actually fixed. A month of Apple Arcade says YouTubers will prove it isn't very shortly.
B. Given the time frame, it's much more likely that they told the software that if the image is blurred not to unlock, which does not actually fix the issue.
C. Samsung's fingerprint reader has never worked reliably.
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B. Given the time frame, it's much more likely that they told the software that if the image is blurred not to unlock, which does not actually fix the issue.
C. Samsung's fingerprint reader has never worked reliably.