Fingerprints and passwords don’t work on some Galaxy phones

Jun 7, 2016 10:43 GMT  ·  By

It’s not uncommon for software updates to cause trouble when it comes to smartphones, and such problems are truly annoying and upsetting, since there’s a lot of personal information involved. A post on Reddit has revealed that some Samsung Galaxy device owners have experienced lock issues after updating to Android Marshmallow 6.0.

User McNooberson has reported that he and his wife were locked out of their phones after they updated to Android Marshmallow 6.0 for the first time. It appears that Samsung’s Galaxy Note 5 and S6 are affected by the issues.

The handsets simply stopped recognizing fingerprints and even the backup password. Google sign-in didn’t work either, and neither did Android Device Manager, so the couple was forced to go to a repair center.

After the report was made public, other users stated that the issue could also be affecting other devices, like the Galaxy Note 4 and Samsung Galaxy S7, despite the fact that the latter comes with Android Marshmallow out of the box.

The only workaround in this situation is to use the Samsung account associated with the device, log into findmymobile.samsung.com and remotely lock and unlock the phone.

The problem seems to be linked to the activation lock software that gets updated during the switch to Android Marshmallow.

The issue appears to affect only a small portion of Samsung users, but the thread now counts 127 comments, which is a bit alarming. Just to be on the safe side, users who wish to update their Galaxy smartphones to Android Marshmallow 6.0 should disable the fingerprint and password security beforehand so that they don’t run into such issues.