Samsung Galaxy S24 family to get faster fingerprint unlocking

Samsung is in the middle of its public beta testing phase for One UI 7 based on Android 15. The latest iteration of the skin will make its official stable debut with the upcoming Galaxy S25 series, expected to be unveiled on January 22.

After that, the update should roll out to older Samsung devices, starting with the Galaxy S24 family. Speaking of which, today a new X post by prolific Chinese leaker Ice Universe brings us some good news regarding the speed of fingerprint unlocking on the Galaxy S24 models. This will be faster, and the sound is apparently clearer too, as demonstrated in the video below showing unlocking on a Galaxy S24 Ultra.

Not only the sound is clearer, but also the fingerprint unlocking speed is extremely fast, which is faster than the previous version. pic.twitter.com/7tCIKgGrOW

— ICE UNIVERSE (@UniverseIce) January 2, 2025

The S24 devices already have the best hardware for fingerprint unlocking speed, using ultrasonic sensors which are faster than optical ones (and also work when your hands are wet). This has long been a differentiating feature for Samsung's flagship line (though now competitors are catching up), but hiccups in One UI software have sometimes made the unlocking experience unnecessarily slow-feeling.

That will apparently change with One UI 7. The animations seem to have been tightened up and made faster (before you basically had to disable unlock animations to feel any speed at all), although we'd say there's still some room for improvement in that area. Anyway, Ice Universe says the experience will be faster than in One UI 6, and that's praiseworthy.

This will allegedly land in the next One UI 7 beta, which may drop in the next few days. We'll let you know when it happens.