Comment 13 for bug 615375

Password fields often used to use asterisk * characters. This became less appropriate over time, for two reasons. First, more complex password requirements meant that people sometimes use real asterisks in their passwords, so displaying the first character typed as an asterisk could be confusing or alarming. And second, more and more user interfaces used fonts that were designed for (or at least variations of fonts designed for) other media, where asterisks were expected to be small footnote markers rather than large multiplication/programming symbols. Asterisks became too hard to see.

Here we have the second problem recurring. The Ubuntu font has a bullet character that is designed for bulleted lists, which makes it uncomfortably small for telling whether you have typed the expected number of characters in your password. This is a non-trivial problem for something like a SIM PIN or a PUK code, where if you enter the wrong code too many times your phone becomes semi-useless.

I think the ideal solution would be to patch the relevant toolkits/themes so that password fields use U+26AB "medium black circle" ⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫ rather than the bullet ••••••••. If that is not practical, a second choice would be to change the Ubuntu font to use the em bullet Vincent mentions rather than the en bullet.