Workaround for Android 15 QPR2 fingerprint firmware glitch on Pixel 9 (non-Pro)

gratei

i have the fingerprint issue on my pixel 7

Every other GrapheneOS user reporting it here appears to have the non-Pro variant of the Pixel 9. You might be the only person using GrapheneOS who has reported it on another device model. It might not even be the same issue that you're experiencing. It could simply be a random hardware glitch where it failed to start.

You are repackaging Android and naming it GrapheneOS.

No, that's hardly what we're doing in GrapheneOS. We have a large set of privacy, security and compatibility improvements we need to port to new releases, maintain and improve. For users on the Stable channel, we've done that nearly perfectly with almost no regressions for adding a major new feature that's quite disruptive to the previous status quo (network location), overhauling the sandboxed Google Play compatibility layer to support it and then porting to one of the 4 major releases per year (Android 15 QPR2).

The fingerprint regression in Android 15 QPR2 is there in the stock Pixel OS. It's not specific to GrapheneOS. We didn't cause it and it isn't something that only happens with the Android Open Source Project either. We fixed a bunch of issues impacting AOSP but not the stock Pixel OS for Android 15 QPR2. Expecting us to fix every Android and Pixel bug impacting the stock OS is just not reasonable. They have massive resources and were still unable to fix this prior to Android 15 QPR2 being released as a stable release despite months of reports for it in the Android 15 QPR2 Betas. It's unreasonable to expect us to provide far more stability than either Apple and Google do with a small team of developers and not even having early access to the major releases. We have to port to new major releases in a day or two and get it out rapidly to ship the full security patches to people. GrapheneOS is remarkably stable and robust especially considering the size of the development team, lack of early access and how fast we're able to ship the updates despite that.

You let this easy to repro issue past QA

No, we posted this thread before the release reached Stable so people would have information on how to work around the issue. We also repeatedly shared it on social media and elsewhere. This issue did not slip through our testing process. It is also not easy to reproduce at all. It at least almost entirely happens only on the non-Pro variant of the Pixel 9. It only happens to certain users randomly at reboot, then goes away again at reboot. Everyone else here on GrapheneOS is reporting it on the non-Pro variant of the Pixel 9. It has something to do with the firmware and something about the Pixel 9 hardware/firmware makes it more common there.

This fingerprint

The fingerprint issue impacts the stock Pixel OS too. It isn't simply an Android Open Source Project issue impacting GrapheneOS but not the stock OS. There are a bunch of news articles written about it. They were unable to get it fixed despite months of Beta testing for Android 15 QPR2. We do not have early access to the source code for new major releases and have far fewer resources. How do you expect us to fix it? As far as we can tell, the likelihood is high that it's not even an OS issue but rather a firmware issue. If a fingerprint or other firmware update is needed to fix it, that's not something we can do ourselves. We currently make an OS, not the hardware and firmware.

not being able to take screenshots immediately until some kind of process wakes up (just says unable to save) are unacceptable.

We haven't even seen a report about this so that indicates it's not a common issue and likely related to a rare configuration. It's probably also something that occurs with the stock OS in a similar rare configuration.

Look how many releases there have been the past 1.5 months. Almost as many as in 6 months. Get your stuff together. We rely on you for a rock solid daily driver.

Releases which reached Stable in February and why we released them instead of waiting:

2025020200: final release prior to monthly security update with major improvements to app compatibility and kernel updates since we always try to avoid major changes in the monthly security update release to avoid delays
2025020300: monthly security backports before the stock OS / AOSP monthly update
2025020500: monthly update
2025021100: major security improvement against forensic data extraction, fix for DisplayPort alternate mode on 9th generation Pixels broken in 2025020200 without being spotted by anyone until over a week later and fix for upstream Wi-Fi kernel driver bug caught by MTE on 9th gen Pixels since a user having it happen in a chain due to a bad nearby Wi-Fi network

Releases which reached Stable in March and why we released them instead of waiting:

2025030200: initial launch of network location after 4 releases with it not reaching Stable (3 in February, 1 in March) along with all the other major changes from the 2nd half of February since we always try to avoid major changes in the monthly security update release to avoid delays
2025030300: backport of Android Security Bulletin patches for March 2025 especially due to it being a quarterly release month
2025030800: Android 15 QPR2 (after 2 releases not reaching Stable, which could have been avoided if we had early access)
2025030900: Terminal app adding user-facing virtualization support, which will be a major pillar of GrapheneOS and many people were excited about it so we did a release to get it shipped
2025031400: substantial compatibility improvements for apps using the Google Play location service with the expectation that network location is provided in a particular way along with massive improvements to the Terminal app addressing many issues and making it far more compelling

There were many other changes brought by these releases. Having 1 release with our changes prior to the monthly update, an early security update and then the monthly update is the normal bare minimum set of releases. Launching network location support and needing to go from it being nothing to a high quality feature was the reason for many of the recent releases. Why do you care how many releases reach Alpha and Beta if you're using Stable? This is how the testing process is supposed to work. It avoided any major regressions not in the stock OS reaching Stable unless you could some very niche app compatibility regressions which were possible to work around by enabling the "Improve Location Accuracy" toggle. The end result is greatly improved compatibility for location rerouting whether or not people use network location along with our built-in network location. There's not much reason to use the Google Play location service anymore and that will become near zero once we ship a better local trilateration algorithm.

I won't be donating more until I see improvements.

You can go back to the stock OS which is impacted by the same fingerprint regression in Android 15 QPR2.