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Apparently if a Pixel 6 runs out of battery, it breaks the fingerprint sensor
July 09, 2025
Now that lucky buyers have had time to play with their newPixel 6 smartphones, we’re starting to see some issues. Unfortunately, most of the issues seem to stem around the fingerprint sensor, which we noted was fairly weak in ourGoogle Pixel 6andPixel 6 Pro reviews.
Disappointingly, it appears there’s more bad news for the Google Pixel 6 fingerprint sensor now. According to multiple users on Reddit, a dead battery can permanently disable your phone’s fingerprint sensor.
See also:The best phones with in-display fingerprint scanners
In thethread, you can see many different people all telling the same story: their Pixel 6 died from an empty battery and, upon rebooting, the fingerprint sensor became non-operational. So far, it appears the only way to fix the problem once it occurs is a factory reset, which is not exactly convenient.
However, at least one person claims they faced the issue without losing battery power. This suggests a dead battery could be a trigger for some other issue instead of the root cause.
Thankfully, there’s already an officialGoogle issue trackerfor this problem. That tracking page has even more people discussing the issue.
In the meantime, if you’re lucky enough to get a Pixel 6, try not to let it run out of juice. The Google Pixel 6 fingerprint sensor might be slow (which is apparentlya feature, not a bug), but a slow sensor is better than none at all.
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