Galaxy J7 Prime fingerprint sensor doesn’t need to be pressed for device unlocking

With the Galaxy J5 Prime and Galaxy J7 Prime, Samsung has finally brought a fingerprint sensor to its affordable smartphone lineup, a move the company was long rumored to be pondering. We have been playing around with the Galaxy J7 Prime the last couple of days, and we have noticed that Samsung has changed how the fingerprint sensor works when the device is locked and the screen is off. On the J7 Prime (and on the J5 Prime as well, we presume), you don’t need to press the home button to unlock the device. Just put your finger on the home button, and the phone unlocks in a second.

Smartphones with rear-facing fingerprint sensors have always worked this way, but Samsung’s devices have required a full press of the home button from the time the company started using fingerprint sensors. Naturally, pressing the button isn’t as quick as simply tapping on it, and it’s also not as cumbersome. Oddly, while the Galaxy J7 Prime (and J5 Prime) gets many features of the Galaxy Note 7 (like Samsung Cloud and the Samsung Notes app), the Note 7’s fingerprint sensor doesn’t work in this manner, so it’s clearly not a part of Samsung’s new Grace UX.

It might not sound like much, but the removal of the need to press the home button is rather convenient in practice. Hopefully, Samsung will make this an option on existing devices when Android 7.0 Nougat arrives sometime in the coming months. The J7 Prime (and J5 Prime) fingerprint sensor works this way out of the box, and we’re guessing upcoming devices from the Korean giant will follow suit.

Look for our review of the Galaxy J7 Prime in the coming days.