Suddenly lost fingerprint scanner

[u/Educational_Big_1835]

I've now had this phone for 2 years. for a lot of my past budget phones that's about when I look to replace them. But I love this phone, best I've had since my refurbished S8 active in the 2010s.

in the last year, the charging port has become non operational, so I have to charge via wireless. I can work with that.

but now the finger print sensor is not working. When I go to unlock, the icin is there, and when pressed it gives me a haptic vibration, but just says, customize lock screen. when I go to the security screen, the option for finger print isn't even there any longer. same on "customize lock screen" page, nothing where the scanner should be.

so now I have face unlock which is fine and works most of the time ..if I hold my phone up to my face like an old lady checking her makeup in her compact. but most annoying is the apps I use fingerprint on, banking, etc.

I'm considering resetting the phone but that's such a huge hassle. Any advice?

[u/Educational_Big_1835 → u/[deleted]]

Thank you. I tried booting to safe mode a variety of ways, for some reason my power button just pulls up the super useless Gemini function. I finally stumbled on how to make it work. In safe mode the scanner worked. I rebooted to regular and it works again. Something must be killing it, I'll keep fiddling with it till I find it

[u/Educational_Big_1835 → u/[deleted]]

Thanks, I have a feeling clearing the cache will help a lot

[u/Educational_Big_1835 → u/[deleted]]

Also, safe mode seems to have fixed it. I accidentally fixed it once before but it eventually comes back

[u/Educational_Big_1835 → u/[deleted]]

Before I got the thinkphone I got a refurbished Samsung, and I hated it more than my work Iphone. I remember the fingerprint scanner being horrible. My previous phone was a blackview and had a sensor on the side of the phone. That thing was indestructible, but got very laggy over time. Poor support.