54% of US smartphone owners already unlock their phone with a fingerprint or a face scan (32% face unlock, 22% fingerprint), according to a June 2024 survey of 525 US smartphone users by research firm Centiment, commissioned by biometric sensor maker Metalenz. That is a bare majority, not a landslide: 39% of owners still rely on a PIN or pattern alone, and 7% do not lock their phone at all. The split also runs sharply along platform lines, with iPhone owners favoring Face ID and Android owners favoring fingerprint sensors.
How many people use fingerprint or face unlock right now?
54% of US smartphone owners use a biometric method, fingerprint or face, to unlock their phone day to day, per the Centiment-fielded, Metalenz-commissioned survey of 525 US smartphone users ages 18 to 65, collected online in June 2024. Face unlock is the single most common method at 32%, fingerprint unlock follows at 22%, and 39% of owners type a PIN or draw a pattern with no biometric step at all.
Figure 1: Face and fingerprint unlock combined now edge out PIN- or pattern-only entry. Source: Centiment survey of 525 US smartphone users, commissioned by Metalenz, June 2024.
Sites and apps that collect a fingerprint or face scan to authenticate a user are collecting a biometric identifier, a category several state laws (Illinois' BIPA among them) single out for extra consent language. A privacy policy generator built for current disclosure requirements keeps that biometric-data clause current without a rewrite every time a state adds a new rule.
Do more people use fingerprint or face unlock?
Face unlock leads fingerprint unlock overall, 32% to 22%, but that single number hides a near mirror-image platform split. Among iPhone owners, 61% use Face ID and only 11% use a fingerprint sensor (largely on older Touch ID models). Among Android owners, the pattern flips: 33% use a fingerprint sensor and just 4% use face unlock.
Figure 2: iPhone owners default to Face ID; Android owners default to a fingerprint sensor. Source: Centiment survey of 525 US smartphone users, commissioned by Metalenz, June 2024.
The platform split traces back to hardware history: Apple removed its fingerprint sensor from the iPhone X onward in 2017 and standardized on Face ID, while most Android manufacturers kept an under-screen or side-mounted fingerprint sensor as the default. Fingerprint and face unlock are not competing on merit alone, they are largely inherited from whichever phone a person already owns. Phone unlock is only one slice of a much larger biometric data market; see our biometric data statistics for 2026 for market size and litigation numbers across facial recognition, voiceprints, and fingerprint databases beyond the device itself.
Has biometric unlock adoption grown over time?
Related research on passwordless sign-in points the same direction, even if it does not isolate phone unlock alone. Awareness of passkeys (an authentication standard that pairs with device biometrics) climbed from 39% of consumers in 2022 to 57% in 2024, per FIDO Alliance's Online Authentication Barometer, a survey fielded across 10,000 consumers in 10 countries each year. That is a fast rise for a security feature that barely existed as a mainstream term three years earlier.
Figure 3: Passwordless authentication awareness nearly doubled the older adoption baseline in two years. Source: FIDO Alliance, 2024 Online Authentication Barometer, n=10,000 across 10 countries, fielded August 2024.
Passkeys are not the same thing as face or fingerprint unlock. In practice most passkey implementations use the phone's existing biometric sensor as the unlock step, which is why the two trends move together even though the FIDO figures track awareness of the login standard, not phone-unlock behavior specifically.
Figure 4: Biometric phone unlock moved from a single hardware feature to the default login method in about a decade. Source: FIDO Alliance 2024 Online Authentication Barometer; Centiment survey commissioned by Metalenz, June 2024.
Do people trust biometrics more than a password?
Yes, by a clear margin. 29% of consumers say biometrics are the most secure way to log in, ahead of a complex password at 15%, a one-time passcode at 14%, and a password manager at 5%, according to FIDO Alliance's 2024 Online Authentication Barometer. Preference for actually logging in follows the same order: 28% for biometrics versus 17% for a complex password.
Figure 5: Biometrics is the only method consumers rank as both more secure and more preferable to use. Source: FIDO Alliance, 2024 Online Authentication Barometer, n=10,000 across 10 countries.
This is consistent with the 54% adoption figure above: people are not using fingerprint or face unlock by default settings alone, most report actively preferring it over typing a password.
How many smartphone owners do not secure their phone at all?
83% of US smartphone owners take at least one step to lock their phone, whether that is a passcode, fingerprint, or face scan, according to Pew Research Center's 2023 survey of 5,101 US adults (American Trends Panel Wave 127, fielded May 15-21, 2023, margin of error plus or minus 1.7 points). The remaining 16% never use any lock method, and that share climbs sharply with age.
Figure 6: Adults 65 and older are roughly three times as likely to skip phone security entirely as adults under 50. Source: Pew Research Center, survey of 5,101 US adults, October 2023.
The Centiment figure of 7% "no lock" from Section 1 and Pew's 16% "never use a security feature" are not directly comparable. Centiment's smaller sample (525 respondents, ages 18-65) skews toward a different age mix than Pew's larger, nationally weighted panel, and the two surveys phrase the underlying question differently. Both point the same direction: a meaningful minority of phone owners, somewhere between one in fifteen and one in six depending on the sample, leave their phone completely unlocked.
How does fingerprint or face unlock compare across methods?
| Unlock method | Share of US owners (2024) | iPhone owners | Android owners |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fingerprint or face (combined) | 54% | 72% | 37% |
| Face unlock | 32% | 61% | 4% |
| Fingerprint unlock | 22% | 11% | 33% |
| PIN or pattern only | 39% | n/a | n/a |
| No lock at all | 7% | n/a | n/a |
Source: Centiment survey of 525 US smartphone users, commissioned by Metalenz, June 2024. iPhone and Android combined-biometric figures are the sum of that platform's face and fingerprint shares from the same survey.
The Bottom Line
54% of US smartphone owners now unlock their phone with a fingerprint or face scan rather than typing a code, and the method they land on is mostly decided by which phone they bought, not a deliberate security choice. That matters for any site or app that also asks users to verify their identity with a fingerprint or face scan, because a biometric identifier is a more sensitive data category under most current privacy laws than an email address or a typed password. Illinois' BIPA and a growing list of state privacy laws require specific consent language before that kind of data gets collected, and a generic privacy policy template written before biometric login became common will usually miss it. That consent gap is also the root of a rising number of biometric privacy lawsuits, and it is the same reasoning airports and other public-facing biometric checkpoints run into when they add face scanning at a gate. The other side of this data is just as relevant to a site owner: 16% of visitors, more among older users, are not securing their own device at all, which is a reminder that account-level protections still matter even as phone-level biometrics spread.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many people use fingerprint or face unlock? 54% of US smartphone owners already unlock their phone with a fingerprint or a face scan, split between 32% who use face unlock and 22% who use a fingerprint sensor, according to a June 2024 survey of 525 US smartphone users conducted by research firm Centiment.
Do more people use Face ID or fingerprint unlock? Face unlock edges out fingerprint overall, 32% to 22%, but the gap is really a platform split: 61% of iPhone owners use Face ID versus just 4% of Android owners, while 33% of Android owners use a fingerprint sensor versus 11% of iPhone owners.
How many smartphone owners do not lock their phone at all? 16% of US smartphone owners never use a passcode, fingerprint, or face scan to lock their phone, according to Pew Research Center's 2023 survey of 5,101 US adults, and that share rises to roughly 30% among adults 65 and older.
Do people think fingerprint or face unlock is more secure than a password? Yes. 29% of consumers rate biometrics as the most secure way to log in, ahead of a complex password at 15%, according to FIDO Alliance's 2024 Online Authentication Barometer, a survey of 10,000 consumers across 10 countries.
Where the Numbers Come From
- Metalenz, fielded by Centiment. (2024). "Smartphone Security Drives Android Users to Switch: US Consumer Sentiment Report." Survey of 525 US smartphone users ages 18 to 65, collected online in June 2024. Unlock method mix and iPhone/Android platform split.
- Pew Research Center. (2023). "How Americans Protect Their Online Data." American Trends Panel Wave 127, n=5,101 US adults, fielded May 15-21, 2023, margin of error plus or minus 1.7 percentage points. Overall lock-method usage and age breakdown.
- FIDO Alliance. (2024). "2024 Online Authentication Barometer." Survey of 10,000 consumers across the UK, France, Germany, US, Australia, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, India, and China, fielded by Sapio Research in August 2024, accurate to plus or minus 1.0 percentage point at 95% confidence. Passkey awareness trend and security/preference rankings by authentication method.
Note: All figures verified as of July 2026. The Centiment/Metalenz survey is the only source found with a direct fingerprint-versus-face split for phone unlock specifically; it is a single, industry-commissioned survey with a modest sample of 525, not a repeated tracking study, so treat the exact percentages as directional rather than a census. This page will be revisited as newer breakdowns are published.
