As Digital Spy reports, several threads on Apple’s official support forums and on Reddit claim Touch ID stopped working correctly after installing iOS 9.1. The issue affects all Apple devices that use Touch ID including the latest iPhones and the iPad Air 2.
It’s currently hard to ascertain how widespread the complaints are or how many users may be affected. Several users have said that it does not appear to repair itself over time as the issue returns after completely resetting the device, even on iPhones where Touch ID worked flawlessly in iOS 9.0.
The general gist of the messages left on Apple’s forums is that the fingerprint sensor will randomly fail after iOS 9.1 is installed. Sometimes it works very slowly but often fails to recognise a fingerprint at all, forcing the user to abort and enter their passcode instead.
One user wrote: “I’m using an iPhone 6s 64GB and upgraded to iOS 9.1 a few days ago. My Touch ID has become very slow or either doesn’t work after several attempts, and I need to input my passcode.”
Another said: “it’s happening on three of my devices all have Touch ID… 6s, 6s plus & iPad Air 2. All were working fine prior to updating to 9.1.”
A more explanatory post on Reddit submitted last week says: “I got an iPhone 6S the Tuesday after release (sept 29) and I’m having a small issue with it. From the day after I got it up through last Saturday when I did a clean restore to iOS 9, Touch ID would not work at least once per day. It’s like the sensor was dead.”
The issue could affect thousands of users as Touch ID is one of the most popular features of the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus. Reviewers have previously praised the upgraded sensor for its exceptional speed and some have even called for it to be slowed down. In iOS 9.0, Touch ID could unlock the phone from sleep so quickly that the user would never see their lock-screen notifications.
Now, the experience certainly seems to have been slowed down but to a level that renders the feature unusable. It’s probably safe to assume that this change hasn’t been made intentionally by Apple and that it will be looking into the claims. The company has yet to comment on the reports of its users.
