I'm quite sure nowadays the finger print sensor is enabled, which leaves your phone usable.
Just a warning would be bad if the phone is actually in the hands of a thief who swapped the sensor to unlock the phone. It is absolutely correct that a manipulated sensor must NOT be capable of unlocking the phone. However, pin unlock should continue to work.
This is why I believe your original post that soem security decision was made that was overly cautious and went out, and that it wasn't their end goal fo bricking so many devices that were just being repaired.
In reality, there's no need to brick an entire phone for a single part that "MAY" potentially be compromised (remember, there was no evidence of compromise, just that the software said if it was not the original sensor, brick the phone)
The bricking of the phone was the part that went to far. When detecting a replaced sensor or something that potentially inteferes with it, the OS should disable the sensor and disconnect it from interacting with the security features. the phone itself should not be disabled, although some disabled features might be innevitable.
Similar to how Samsung handles KNOX. If you do something to your phone that trips KNOX's security to believe it's compromised, The entire samsung device doesn't get bricked. But KNOX shuts down and refuses to let you use KNOX required services. But at no point is the entire device bricked with the requirement of buying a new one.
I believe it was a mistake by Apple. Not an intentional one. And they did fix it shortly after it started becoming more and more prevalent.
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So security be damned? What if someone steals your phone, replaces the fingerprint sensor and then uses that to bypass the security to get your bank, contacts and whatever else is on your phone. Think about this just a little.
Bricking the device is not a requirement in this case either.
First: for a "thief" to do so, woudl require shutting down the device to swap the sensor. iOS will always ask for a passcode on restart of the device, so the fingerprint sensor is still useless here.
Second: If the OS does detect a compromised fingerprint sensor, the more reasonable action is to just block use of the fingerprint sensor as a means of authentication, forcing fall back to passcode.
Bricking the device entirely, making it unusable, and then the initial response of "just buy a new phone" was extremely unreasonable. Very anti-competitive (many countries have laws prohibiting hardware manufacturers from banning 3rd party repair).
And even Apple admitted this after the fact and released an OS update that did what I said above. Block the offensive part, without bricking the whole phoen
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what if that spilled milk made your $1000 device unusable while losing access to all your data?
And what if that spilled milk was intentionally poured onto your device, by the people who sold you that device?
your attempt at analogy and diminishing peoples impact by equating it to spilled milk shows how little you understand.