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Face unlocking for Google’s Pixel 4 series of phones just keeps stopping. Some say the Android 11 upgrade is to blame, while others point to more recent monthly updates. A restart may temporarily fix the problem for some, while others encounter the problem in tandem with the symptoms associated with the seemingly still unresolved device sensor issue.
Affected people get the message “Clean the top of your screen, including the black bar” when they try to unlock their phone using Face Unlock. In some cases, Face Unlock may work a small percentage of the time, but for the most part, the functionality is discontinued altogether. But while the precise problem is fairly Consistently, the preparation for these symptoms varies.
The error message for those affected.
Some people were only affected after updating to Android 11, others have been having issues for a longer time. In some cases, restarting can fix things temporarily – on the scale of a few hours to a few days – but the problem seems to universally return. The level of detail in reporting varies, but for some affected people, the attempt to re-enroll a face also fails. But whether the problem is intermittent or continuous, the ultimate effect remains the same: Face unlock does not work. And as the only biometric system available on the Pixel 4 and 4 XL, which didn’t have a fingerprint sensor, that’s quite a downside.
This is not the first time that we have reported a related issue. In January, a “hardware not available” error affected face unlock on the Pixel 4 for many device owners, and Android 11 Developer Preview 3 could break facial unlock if you reverted to Android 10 stable after the release. have installed.
Google claims that this specific “black bar” issue was fixed in a related issue tracker thread, with timing that would otherwise be in the November update, but reports continue. The only potentially related fix included in the Functional Patch Notes for the November Update is a “fix for dark screen during phone calls” related to the device’s sensor performance on the Pixel 4 series. As mentioned earlier, some have speculated that these issues are related and that symptoms of the larger and well-known device sensor issue that Google phones seem to be affected intermittently. Some of those suffering from the issue have further tested the device’s sensors and confirmed that the front proximity sensor and ambient light sensor are no longer reporting data while the issue occurs, indicating that the issues are at least linked, if not directly causal.
We reached out to Google for more information regarding this issue and the reports below, but the company did not respond to our requests. If and when we hear more, we’ll be sure to update our coverage.
- Source:
- Google Issue Tracker; Google Product Forums: (1),
- (2),
- (3),
- (4),
- (5),
- (6); Reddit: (1),
- (2),
- (3),
- (4),
- (5); XDA Forums: (1),
- (2)
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