Android 16 will bring a new anti-theft feature to phones not made by Google and Samsung

Google's Identity Check anti-theft security feature arrived on its Pixels with the December 2024 Pixel Feature Drop, and Samsung has already incorporated it into its One UI 7 based on Android 15. But for every other Android device out there, this will only appear as part of the Android 16 update.

So here's what it is. If you enable it, Identity Check will ask for your biometrics before letting you change critical security settings or allowing access to saved passwords and other sensitive data. Crucially, the biometrics prompt for Identity Check specifically does not allow a fallback to your PIN or password, you have to use biometrics.

Obviously, the idea here is that if a thief gets hold of your device, they will thus be prevented from accessing your critical security information unless they force you to provide your biometric authentication like your fingerprint too, in which case we're not talking theft anymore but kidnapping at the least, and you have bigger problems.

Since Identity Check needed a rewrite of the code for the biometric authentication so that it doesn't provide the usual PIN or password fallback, it can only arrive as part of an Android update. Samsung was quick to incorporate it into One UI 7, and other OEMs will hopefully add it in their Android 16 updates.

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