Optical scanners can be tricked by high resolution fingerprint photos. Also, known to not work as well if our finger is wet, dry, dirty, oily etc. They are also known to be slower than capacitive and ultrasonic and known to be less than accurate.
Ultrasonic uses sound waves to make and compare prints. Faster, more secure but dirty fingers can also cause problems.
Capacitive uses an array of very small capacitors to map the fingerprint. They are harder to fool since they do no not actually capture an actual map or photo of your fingerprint.
If google was really worried about security, they would have used capacitive and placed the scanner on the power button like some phones. Not sure but think a rear capacitive would be impossible on glass, but not sure.
Also if google was worried about security how could they suddenly with an update make it faster. Did they take away some security measures?
My opinion is google went with the optical to keep the price of the phones low and at the prices for both phones they are low. So it is the typical give and take. I would bet the Pixel 7 will be 100 more and have an ultrasonic...just my opinion.
With Samsung, I have read the ultrasonics used on the S10 were slow, the S20 (early models) I can vouch were slow and failed to work (I returned one); SW update helped, but with the release of the S21 it was a more modern sensor and a sensor that was over 70 percent larger in area and that did the trick.
I am not making a statement on the sensor just stating facts on how they work (or partial info). I will make my own decision on the P6P when I receive it, which is supposed to be Dec 17-18. (I'll believe it when it is in my non-moisturized but most likely clean hands.) And I also use hand sanitizer probably more than most here so that dries out the hands. I do NOT USE IT due to the Wuhan virus, I use it cause back in '16, I ended up in a hospital for a week with infective Endocarditis, bacterial heart infection. And living in a very dry climate at around 6K feet in altitude, plus the sanitizer my hands are dry and will remain dry.
What I am hoping for, is that next week in the December security update with some feature updates, on is they will turn on photo facial recognition like Samsung has on the S21 (after being told about that fact, I have researched it). It works when there is light, other times not so good. It is NOT secure; however, from what I can find out, for secure apps, all a person has to do is then scan in their fingerprints and they have access to the secured app.
However, for just answering a phone call, surfing the net, etc., the phone rec is all that is required.
That would be a dream come true for me and I believe many more. Time will tell. Next Monday, we will know.....
