I find FaceID worse than TouchID, in a couple of ways:
1. It's very common both at work and at home that the iPhone is flat on a table and I want to quickly unlock it to check something. Previously, snaking a finger out was sufficient; now, I have to deliberately pick it up, look at it, and then swipe upwards. (It's also much more conspicuous in meetings.)
2. FaceID seems to struggle (i.e. fail to unlock, or delay the unlock) more often than TouchID - it seems quite sensitive to the angle it's held at as it scans my face.
Personally, I find FaceID to be vastly inferior to TouchID for many of my regular use cases.
Perhaps the worst one is that you cannot easily unlock your phone while it lays on a conference room table to see the contents of a message. You need to picking it up and point it at your face. Likewise when using the phone while it is in a stand/holder.
The one and only benefit I found is during the winter, it is easier to unlock the phone with gloves on.
I have an old iPhone, so I can't compare the two. But what I will say is that I REGULARLY have trouble with TouchID. Hands not dry enough, or just failing to recognize fingerprint for other reasons. If FaceID does better than work, say, 2/3 of the time then I'll have a better experience than TouchID.
FWIW I thought I would miss TouchID for a long time until I finally bought a new iPhone and realised that FaceID actually worked much better than I expected.
Yes there are some occasions where it doesn't work well (when you're trying to unlock the phone without looking at it properly) but there are also many occasions where it works much better. Most of the time my phone now unlocks so smoothly that I don't even realise it was locked. So on balance I think FaceID would actually be a plus.
I find that Face ID is only a mild win over Touch ID in situations where it's better, such as when you're taking the phone out of your pocket in one motion, or when the phone is propped upright and you get more details on a notification.
But in situations where it fails I find that it fails harder and repeatedly, which makes you want to choose a simple password (perhaps that's why Apple tucks away the alphanumeric option). When a phone is laying flat on a desk, you can lean your face over the phone. When your head is on a pillow, you can lift your head off the pillow. When the lighting conditions aren't good, you can just turn on the lights and position the phone at that "magic distance" until it unlocks. But if you don't it'll just fail again and again.
As a minor point, I'm surprised that you prefer to double press while looking at your phone, versus having a fingerprint reader on the back so you can unlock your phone in one gesture of hand toward the payment system.
> While there are mixed opinions from privacy experts on which is more secure, Apple claims that Face ID is 20 times more secure than Touch ID. While the chances of someone unlocking your iPhone using a spoofed fingerprint is one in 50,000, this number grows exponentially to a false positive of one in a million when it comes to Face ID.
FaceID is a downgrade for my usage primarily because it requires you to be looking fairly directly at the phone to unlock(even with that “require attention” setting turned off). There are countless times when I want to casually unlock and check or adjust something from the corner of my eye, rather than devoting my full attention to my phone(even an Apple Watch giving me many notifications instead of the phone). It’s especially bad in the car where you can’t unlock your phone without obstructing your vision.
Also when laying on the couch your face is often squished making it not recognize you. I also like to use my devices in landscape orientation meaning that the camera used for FaceID is obstructed. Landscape orientation with TouchID put your thumb right where it needed to be to unlock the device!
With TouchID I basically never reverted to using a passcode, and now with FaceID I’d estimate it’s 20% of the time I use a passcode and another 20% of the time I have to reposition my face or my hands after it fails in order to get it to work.
The only benefit of the new mechanism for me is eliminating bezel space require for the fingerprint sensor. That’s a big benefit, but it comes with very annoying first world problems, which are especially annoying since prices for these devices have gone up so much recently.
As someone with two pairs of AirPods, the lack of a headphone jack also annoys me. Most commonly when in a car with and aux jack and no Bluetooth. Bluetooth devices also require charging one more battery. High end earbuds and IEMs also require a 3.5mm jack and IIRC it might not even be possible to do high end audio via BT due to how it works for audio(something about the audio getting recompressed).
I like FaceID better personally. It's instant, to the point I forget that my phone is locked. All of the TouchID phones I've tried have a delay. Plus moving your finger to the sensor is just one more thing to think about.
My only gripe is that, with the Apple Watch unlock option (for masks), it sometimes unlocks when it's not even pointed at my face, which is not something I want.
I don't agree, I've had a phone with Face ID for years now and I still often encounter situations where Touch ID would work better. It is easier/less awkward to unlock your phone with Touch ID in a wider variety of situations, because it does not require the phone to be both aimed at your face and close enough to your face.
Touch ID also doesn't have to use heuristics to "guess" if your face might be in front of the phone so that it should look for your face to unlock. The presence of the thumb/finger is the signal.
I also prefer the phone to have a home button than not to have one. Missing the home button made other buttons' functions overloaded, so now I often inadvertently trigger Apple Pay by double-clicking the side button when I didn't mean to.
Basically, I think there are a number of subtle UX regressions that they introduced when they made this change, and it wasn't really worth it. It's not a disaster, just a series of minor annoyances that I'd prefer to do without.
I have to disagree. Both systems have advantages over the other, and of course with a mask on TouchID has a pretty big advantage right now. But:
- FaceID is way better when your fingers are not perfect: after washing hands, in the kitchen, when wearing gloves etc.
- FaceID is more secure (lower chance of a false positive)
- FaceID already starts working when you pick up the phone (you do not need to trigger it), so by the time I swipe up to unlock, it has already long since identified my face
- FaceID enabled you to hide the content of notifications and only show them when you look at the phone
Mostly, I hope they bring TouchID back, preferably via a scanner on the back of the phone.
Outside of providing a bigger screen, FaceID is strictly worse:
- When I pulled my old iPhone out of my pocket, I would have my finger on the scanner and it would be unlocked before it reached my face. With FaceID on the iPhone X, I have to wait a few seconds.
- If you wake up and you're squinting as you look at your phone, FaceID won't work
- If you're wearing a hat and sunglasses, FaceID might not work
- If you're doing something else but you want to unlock your phone on the side in preparation for your next task, you have to stop and look at the phone
Well, generally, when you grab your phone, you're going to have your thumb/finger close to the TouchID button anyway.
Furthermore, having your phone flat on the table and just wanting to peak at it is a major and common use case I'm anybody can relate to. I'm fine with FaceID but definitely regard it as a step back and the cases where I can't use FaceID or it has failed easily outnumber situations where I couldn't use TouchID.
Having just switched from a Pixel 3 to and iPhone 11 I’m inclined to agree that FaceID is a step backward. It has a great high tech feel, but:
1. It’s much less reliable. Especially in bed when I get paged at night I almost always have to revert to PIN auth, which is unfortunate when I’m disoriented and seconds count.
2. It’s much slower. With the placement of fingerprint sensors on Pixel phones it is totally natural to have the phone unlocked and open by the time the screen comes into view. With FaceID I don’t even start that process until then, and it’s a several step process: assuming the screen is already on (this works well) I have to look at the phone, wait a moment... then swipe up to actually unlock the phone. Facial recognition aside, the act of swiping up alone is way more work than fingerprinting into a Pixel phone.
3. The thing I like most about FaceID is checking notifications - I can simply look at the screen and Signal messages unlock, etc.
I’m convinced that most of the hate iPhone users have for fingerprint unlock relates to the placement of the sensor, and (never having used an iPhone fingerprint reader this is speculation) maybe it’s speed or reliability. The implementation on Pixel phones was really great and I’ll be sad to see it go.
For me, Face ID is a huge annoyance and only works ~25% of the time. I like to have my phone flat on my desk at work and now I have to pick it up every time to unlock it. It also doesn't work well when I'm lounging on the couch, it needs you to be looking perfectly straight at it. After it fails it has some weird delay before allowing a second attempt that I can never get right.
I agree with FaceID being less dependable. That's my biggest annoyance. It's awkward with the pandemic because you have to lift your mask up briefly in public to use your phone, or sit there typing a long password.
I had an iPhone SE before my current 13 Mini and I really miss the TouchID (even after a few months).
No, the issue is different. With FaceID, if there was no swipe, your phone would unlock all the time for no reason at all. For example while driving, or while having it flat on your desk and hovering near it, and so on.
I am very skeptical about FaceID. I actually love TouchID, can hardly imagine anything better, but Apple has surprised us before.
1. It's very common both at work and at home that the iPhone is flat on a table and I want to quickly unlock it to check something. Previously, snaking a finger out was sufficient; now, I have to deliberately pick it up, look at it, and then swipe upwards. (It's also much more conspicuous in meetings.)
2. FaceID seems to struggle (i.e. fail to unlock, or delay the unlock) more often than TouchID - it seems quite sensitive to the angle it's held at as it scans my face.
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