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Ok, so yestery we brought you word of how there were problems with earlier Google Pixel phones and their microphones, and how owners are finally getting some remuneration. All is not bad in the world of the Pixels, however. In fact, Google just announced some new things you’re going to be able to do with your fingerprint sensor.
These days, we’re all (or almost all) used to using our fingerprints to unlock our phones, and to provide an extra layer of security (and ease of use) in our apps (say, your banking app with the crazy-to-type complex password, now unlocks with a simple fingerprint read). That all makes sense, right? But when it comes into logging into Google services on the web (from your device), well, you were still typing in passwords, or relying on a password manager to get you in.
As of today (well, yesterday, technically) Google will allow you to log into some of their services using the biometric authentication in place of a password. In other words, Google is getting serious about their whole push to eliminate passwords. Your fingerprints are your own, and not something easily sharable or hackable (90s action movie plot points not withstanding).
At the moment, it’s just on a few select Android phones, but it will eventually be rolled out to any phone running Android 7.0 and above. Want to see if your phone is supporting it? Head on over to passwords.google.com and see if you get the prompt as shown above. Additionally, if you want to read up more on what the fingerprint sensor can do for you, these support articles (here and here) may be of interest to you.
If you try it out, let us know how it works. At the moment, most of the Knapsack crew are rolling with iPhones of varying vintages, so we can’t test this one out first hand. google.com
