To fix this issue the scanner need to make only 1 reading while my finger is pressed down. It needs to wait for me to lift my finger and put it back down, before it makes a second reding. OR it needs to have some timout period before it makes a second reading.
So far both of these are not present in the last updates.
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Hmm!
The sensor must react to electrically acitiviy, i.e. the finger effects the status quo. As the finger nears the sensor it reacts maybe 0.1mm away which is a sensitivity issue that isn’t user adjustable.
Then as the finger moves closer it ‘reads’ the print and if ‘in tune’ unlocks.
Now of course there is the time scale.
The sensor may lock on to the finger-print every 10mS or every 60mS, so the speed at which the finger approaches the sensor matters. 5 locks in 50mS or 5 locks in 300mS. It would be useful for the user to be able to adjust this.
I would imagine the general idea is that each person will adapt their behaviour to get the ‘best’ results.
I believe they already applied something like that. When I first got my Fairphone, 6 months ago the fingerprint reader sometimes indeed did a burst of scans within a second. The only way I can somewhat reproduce the issue is by using a finger that I never enrolled and slowly slide it from left to right on the scanner. But it then only tries every half second or so. Which is fine, you want to unlock your phone quickly. It works instantly with any other finger that is scanned. Even if I put them in the most impractical positions. I rarely get an error, but when I do it doesn’t burst right into “too many attempts”.
So I’m not sure what I’m doing right here which doesn’t work for you guys. Any word from FP support? I personally really think this issue is resolved. I would say re-enroll your fingers and make sure you place your finger correctly. Which for me is no problem at all. Even with the official protective case which makes the fingerprint scanner harder to press.
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Hi,
why is this bug marked as solved? I cannot find any solution in the thread?
I got this problem too and it’s really annoying.
Hi and welcome to the forum.
Where does it say it has been solved ??
Because it is solved here:
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That doesn’t actually solve it: it just adds the option to unlock and turn on with a single press. When I tried that, it was so prone to causing this problem that I turned it off at once.
The problem does still happen, even with turn-on and unlock as two distinct presses: it happened to me just this morning. The fingerprint sensor is still prone to detecting a single press as dozens of presses a fraction of a second apart, particularly when your finger happens not to be well-centred. By the time you recentre it it’s too late… this should be soluble in software with a simple half-second hysteresis value or something. I don’t know why fixing it is taking so long.
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This may be resolved by having multiple prints of different parts of the finger ~ I’ve seen it mentioned and it makes a lot of sense. 
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For me, it was definitely improved with the latest update.
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That often works, but not always 
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Yes, but the issue is solved already
The issue is not yet solved!
Rescanning your finger, or adding different parts of your finger, or whatever else, doesn’t solve the issue. At best it just circumvents it.
I’ve had this issue happen dozens of times with part of my palm, my knuckles, etc. Usually when I want to just wake the screen to check the time and my phone is lying somewhere in a position where it’s hard to pickup, but it’s easy to press with some random part of my hand.
Also trying to unlock with a dirty finger. That never scans properly the first time.
The only thing that would fix this is a one-time-scan per finger press. Nothing else!!!
And it should be easy. I’m a developer, I know how to debug things, and I know how code works. And this thread is starting to get silly with all the “fixes” that don’t fix the issue.
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As you seem to understand how to solve this, I hope you contacted Fairphone support and provided as much information as possible? For the time being workarounds mentioned here might help at least partially.
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There is room for improvement for the scanner. The reason I consider it solved is because FP already applied a round of fixes that have improved the scanner. I don’t experience these issues anymore. Maybe now it’s just a matter of adjusting the minutiae accuracy. Maybe it’s set a bit too high but still works fine for 80% of the people. Maybe your fingers are a bit harder to scan? Because even if my finger is a bit wet or dirty, it still works. And when it doesn’t, a single stroke on my pants makes it ready to go.
I agree that the instant unlock feature doesn’t solve it. But a software release earlier this year did improve the default unlock behavior. Best to #contactsupport so they can investigate more improvements. They prioritize issues based on incoming tickets.
On my side I also encounter issues to unlock my FP with fingerprint.
Recent updates seam to avoid multiple quick vibrations occurring during first 2s after a pressing my finger, but the phone is still difficult to unlock and block new unlocking attempts after about 2s. I am using /e/ os and I am currently discussing the issue with murena support team.
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i’ve re-enrolled my fingers 2 times by now and i’m still having a lot of problems, both with it not reading and, with minimal sweat in my fingers, " dirty" message appearing… my fingerprint sensor is almost unnusable sometimes…
Yes sweat is an issue, you may want to record one with sweaty fingers to see if that helps.
I use an FP3 and work outside a lot, so frequently wash my hands, and what happens ~ I get my fingers are dirty
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Yeah bit its faar from ideal for a person that sweats from their hands im literally considering returning the phone…
I’ve found something of workaround. It seems the problem occurs only if you touch the sensor lightly. What I mean is that in my head I distinguish three categories of touch - light, medium and hard.
Light is when you barely touch the sensor. In that case if you finger is clean, etc. the phone will unlock, but if your finger is e.g. dirty the problem fromt his thread will occur, i.e. multiple scan attempts and phone will lock the fingerprint.
Medium is when you press your finger on the sensor firmly without making the button click. In that case I’ve found that if your finger is not recognized, the phone will make only a single attempt at reading it and will not casue the multiple scans problem.
Hard is when you actually make the button click, which is outside of the scope of the topic, but I wanted to have it here just for the sake of completeness.
So, yeah, if you are not pressing the sensor by accident, as I very often do, try to press it more firmly, without clicking the button, and see if that makes only a single scan attempt. I’m curious to see if it’s the same with other people.
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For me it works fine in any case. I really wonder if this may have to do with the patterns of fingerprints. Just like some face unlock and photo camera software is biased towards certain ethic features, the fingerprint software may be callibrated better for a certain swirl in fingerprints.
I have an ulnar loops fingerprint on my index finger and a double loops on my thumb (mostly use this one). Both work fine for me. What about those who have issues?