In recent years, smartphone manufacturers have adopted Optical fingerprint scanners in the replacement of physical fingerprint scanners to place them under the display. Yet, these optical scanners are usually slower than the physical counterparts.
Samsung users discovered a way to make their under screen fingerprint scanner work faster. This mod is as simple as disabling the battery optimization for the fingerprint scanner. Those who’ve latest Samsung Galaxy devices can try this mod by doing following steps:
1. Open the Settings app.
2. Scroll down till you see Apps section in settings.
3. Open the Apps section and on the top you can see three dot menu (More Options).
4. Click on three dot menu and select Special access.
5. Now select first option Optimize battery usage.
6. Tap the drop-down menu and select All.
7. Search for “com.samsung.android.biometrics.app.settings”
8. Disable the battery optimization if enabled.
9. Reboot.
Users noted that this mod may not work on all devices. According to some users on XDA-Dev, it works on any Note 10 series devices. As for the latest Galaxy S20, users reported having mixed success with the mod. This also works on Tab S6, according to one user.
I’ve personally tested it on my Galaxy Note 10. It worked well and compared the fingerprint recognizing speed by enabling and disabling the battery optimization. When the battery optimization enabled it took almost 1.20 seconds and when disabled it took just 60 milliseconds to unlock the device (digits may vary from device to device).
The reason this mod works on some Samsung devices may have to do with the aggressive battery optimization. Every Android manufacturers have their own implementation of battery optimization. Some take it to the extreme by optimizing the critical apps used to function device smoothly. Looks like Samsung even optimized the fingerprint scanners for some devices, causing the delay.