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An issue with the calibration tool affects professionals and amateurs alike
The Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro fingerprint sensor woes continue. This time it’s not a problem with the sensor itself, but issues that can arise if you need a screen repair. While your screen might work after a successful repair, there’s a chance that your fingerprint sensor won’t, and fixing it is a roll of the dice.
The best summary of the issue to date was presented by Louis Rossmann, a prominent right to repair advocate on YouTube:
For a bit of context, secure components like the fingerprint sensor often need to be “calibrated” before they can be accepted on a repaired device. Apple was well known at one point for requiring that repairs swap the Touch ID buttons between parts when replacing a display, for example, further requiring a huge machine to allow Touch ID modules themsleves to be replaced. In-display sensors add their own additional headaches based simply on how they work, having to read through the layers of the display reliably means an even more precise repair is required.
Fortunately, Google released a calibration tool for both professionals and home repairs, democratizing the process a little. But unfortunately, that tool doesn’t always work reliably.
Image via User 7551229624303985221 on the Pixel Phone Help forums.
As reported by Rossmann, many home repairs and repair technicians are running into an error over the last four months with the tool where it reports that it “cannot find the unique calibration for this device.” The Google product forums are often a good indicator of how widespread a given issue is — Pixel owners are more vocal than the average when it comes to problems, in our experience — and reports there are fairly widespread for what most would assume to be a niche issue.
For whatever reason, some repairs for the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro’s fingerprint sensor either result in a situation that can’t be calibrated, or the calibration process itself is remarkably non-deterministic and can fail for no apparent reason. Even original screen hardware and sensors can cause the problem to occur, and replacing the display multiple times or factory resetting doesn’t make a difference. Some report that the process can eventually be coaxed into working, but it’s unclear how. The reports come from a variety of attempted home and professional repairs, and there isn’t much of a pattern among those that are affected, though using Windows to run the calibration tool seems to work more reliably.
Some have speculated that the December update was intended to address these issues, but Google’s particular phrasing of the tweaks in that update wasn’t clear. Others claim the issue is even more straightforward, and Google merely moved the requisite fastboot files from its server causing the associated download to fail. A bug on Google’s Issue tracker was started for the problem a week ago. We’ve reached out to Google for more information regarding the issue, but the company has yet to respond.
In the meantime, those that need a screen repair on their Pixel 6 should be wary. Even taking it to the professionals at uBreakiFix can apparently cause the issue to crop up, and attempting a repair at home with this kind of documented problem occurring is probably just asking for trouble, unfortunately.
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