Samsung's Galaxy Note 20 and Note 20 Ultra are getting yet another important software update

by Adrian Diaconescu

Jan 06, 2021, 8:51 AM

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Samsung's Galaxy Note 20 and Note 20 Ultra are getting yet another important software update

Commercially released less than five months ago, the Galaxy Note 20 and Note 20 Ultra are set to remain Samsung's latest flagship phones for a few more weeks, so it's not exactly surprising to see the company still working hard on keeping the two's software as fresh, zippy, and as secure as possible.

The newest update delivered to the S Pen-wielding high-enders around the world as we speak, for instance, takes care of a very specific problem labeled as "moderate" in terms of severity in Samsung's January 2021 security bulletin.

This bug was "privately disclosed" by an unnamed source almost three months back, leading to "false recognition" of the under-display fingerprint scanner on the Note 20 and Note 20 Ultra. While the largest global smartphone vendor doesn't go into a lot of detail regarding the nature and root cause of the vulnerability or exactly how easy it was for malicious individuals to exploit it prior to this patch, it sure sounds like the aforementioned biometric sensor had trouble dealing with screen protectors of some type.

$201

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Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra Unlocked

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$201

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Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Unlocked

Buy at Amazon

Namely, an "abnormal behavior" related with certain screen protectors used to result in a high FRR (false rejection rate) of fingerprint identification, which is little more than a convoluted way of saying the fingerprint reader was simply not working properly on many Galaxy Note 20-series devices.

Since the issue was considered "moderately" severe, we have reason to believe Note 20 and Note 20 Ultra users may have encountered a fairly large number of false positive fingerprint readings in the last few months as well, which is why you should never rely on a single method of protecting your most precious mobile data nowadays.

Of course, the facial recognition technology on many of the best Android handsets out there, including Samsung's flagships, is not very secure either, but for what it's worth, this particular bug is apparently fixed now.

By the way, in case you're wondering, SamMobile reports the bug fix is rolling out alongside the initial Android 11 promotion for some Note 20 and Note 20 units and separately as far as others are concerned, so you might want to double check if your software is indeed up to date before breathing a sigh of relief for avoiding this pretty serious vulnerability.