For the past several generations of smartphones, especially the Galaxy line from Samsung, I feel as if with each generation, certain features take a step forward and others take a step back. And then, maybe a couple of generations later, the ones that took a step back finally take a step forward. With the Samsung Galaxy S8, I feel that they have taken a step back with the fingerprint sensor.
I’m not usually one to change smartphones each year. I think it’s a waste of money and with each generation when it’s usually only a marginal upgrade, so why waste money.
I currently have the Samsung Galaxy S7, not even the S7 Edge. I purposely did not choose the Edge version but that’s a discussion for another day. Before I had the S7, I had the S4. I skipped a couple of generations mostly because Samsung removed support for the SD Card. Once Samsung added this back in for the Galaxy S7, I thought to myself that it’s time to upgrade and everything will be a step forward.
I wrote an article of my thoughts on the Samsung Galaxy S8 but I wanted to add a follow-up in regards to a specific component.
When I got the Galaxy S7, I made use of the fingerprint sensor. With the integration of the fingerprint sensor and the home button, I can activate and unlock my phone with one click. I used to use a pin code to unlock my phone and that, of course, required at least 5 taps on the phone to unlock. 1 tap on the home button to activate and then 4 taps for the pin code.
With the fingerprint sensor on the Galaxy S7, I press the home button and my phone unlocks right away because I scanned the fingers I normally use to click the home button. I love this feature of the Galaxy S7.
With the new Samsung Galaxy S8, the fingerprint sensor is now on the back of the phone, next to the camera lens. This makes it much harder to use and I’m not the only one to think so.
First I have to click the home button to activate, then I need to flip the phone over and scan my finger. Some of you may be asking why I would need to flip it over to scan. Well, because the scanner is next to the camera lens, I need to see where it is. I don’t want to “feel” for where the scanner may be and accidentally brush my fingers over the lens. I’ll end up having to clean the lens too often because of this.
Some of the other reports in regards to the fingerprint scanner is that it’s not as sensitive. There are two parts to the equation when it comes to scanning sensitivity, hardware and software. Much of this part can be remedied with better software.
At this time, I have no plans to upgrade from the S7 to the S8. I’m going to wait and see what they’ll do with the S9 next year.