It's innovation -- but it's also at the expense of taking away a feature I regularly use.

I frequently unlock a phone that's flat on a desk that's at an arm's length. Now, to unlock, I suspect I'll need to lift and point that device towards my face in order to authenticate. Since I haven't tried the iPhone X yet, I'm not sure how liberal they are with the angle required to capture your face, but it seems unlikely this can be done with the device flat on a desk.

To me, that's unfortunate ... and it's a feature change that having TouchID integrated into the display, as was rumored to be their original intention, would have avoided.

Not to be blunt but why get the phone if it’s going to make your life miserable in a sense?

Miserable? I don't think that's likely to happen. It's only a phone. I'm speaking about convenience.

I'm not certain I'm getting the phone. But if I do, it'll be for the camera. It's my number one use case of my phone, and it seems like it's got a great camera. I know there are good alternatives from Android, but I'm largely married to the Apple ecosystem.

If you're an Apple user, you don't really get a choice over whether to adopt this new stuff. You'll either buy it now, or you'll have to buy it anyway the next time you upgrade because there won't be any other options. Or you switch to Android.

Often this is fine because the new stuff is unambiguously great. Sometimes it's miserable. That's life as an Apple customer.

I bought an iPhone 6 on eBay about a month ago after another one broke. It's good as new, works perfectly, was super-easy to purchase.

So don't worry: the Apple upgrade cycle really isn't that bad.

Do you think you'll still be using a 6 in two years' time, though?

> It's innovation

Microsoft SP4 have had that for 2 years (unlocking with 3D scanning of the face), so I'd not call it innovation. But regardless, a sensor on the back would be better IMO.

…which would not help in that gentleman's case. How good is a fingerprint scanner in the back of a phone when it's lying flat on a desk and the user doesn't want to lift up the phone?

I'm kind of surprised on this because it's been around on various Android and Windows devices for a while. I understand that it might be more reliable and faster, but that's incremental rather than revolutionary.

"Reliable and fast" is exactly why TouchID was so great when they introduced it. They aren't just nice-to-have features, they're the bare minimum requirements for this kind of thing -- a feature that you use constantly, and which gates your access to all other features.

> "Reliable and fast" is exactly why TouchID was so great when they introduced it.

Although it wasn't particularly either when it was first introduced.

I think you misremember. Here’s Daring Fireball on the iPhone 5S (https://daringfireball.net/2013/09/the_iphone_5s_and_5c):

“Once you’ve added a fingerprint, subsequent scans of that finger are nearly instantaneous. Touch ID is way faster than “fast enough”. I’d call it “I can’t believe it works this quickly” fast. It’s also very accurate — only a handful of times over the past week have I had to try a second time, and each of those times, I hadn’t really squared up my finger with the sensor.”

I know many people regard DF as overly biased, but as I recall, the general reception for Touch ID was very positive. Let me know if you find a review that says otherwise.

> Let me know if you find a review that says otherwise.

Personal experience from having got a 5S at launch. And every iPhone with Touch ID since.

Fair enough! It works great for me.

Oh, I can't deny it's absolutely amazing and almost invisible now - my 7 only has trouble when there's moisture involved. But the early iterations were definitely clunky (but still fairly amazing as a technology, I can't deny that!)

I'm expecting Face ID to be the same - kinda clunky but amazing on the X, almost frictionless on the XI, and then almost completely transparent on the XII.

I wouldn't class it as revolutionary either, but it /is/ innovative.

Unlocking your phone with your face has been a regular feature of many smartphones for at least 5 years.

Being able to unlock someone else's phone with a picture of their face has been a bug for the same length of time.

The innovation is in implementing it well. I have no idea if Apple has implemented this feature well but if they did then it’s innovative. The innovation is not in being first it’s in doing it well first.

EDIT: It is innovative to do things well for the first time.

No wonder Android people do not understand why people pay good money for very locked down iPhone, to them crappy implementation for hardware and software is good enough.

Why the troll comment? There are good and bad points to both ecosystems. For instance the Fingerprint reader on my Pixel is faster and more accurate than the TouchID on my iPhone 7. That doesn't make me go, iPhone sucks. The implementation on Facial Recognition may not be as great on the android phones that support it, but that doesn't mean you should bash a whole ecosystem and community of people.

It appears you haven't touched a decent android phone before. I think you probably should before making these kind of comments.

You mean with a picture of your face....

Not OP - but it's not innovation for me personally. Not technically, I mean it's not a feature that I expect to make an impact in my life, and if the iPhone 12 (or w/e) has support for Display TouchID then I'd never use FaceID again.

This is all speculation of course - and likely outside of the scope of this conversation, hopefully I'm not detracting too much though :)

I'm asking same question. How is faceid innovation over touchid? But to answer your question. With touchid you can unlock your phone immediately you bring it out of pocket. I don't see any additional value over touchid. For me it's actually inferior, because I have to grab the phone even for simple tasks, like reading new message. So why should I accept this? Because of larger screen, which is not even bezel to bezel? Also don't act as face recognition is apple thing. They didn't invent it or weren't first to use it. Innovation is when you bring something new and unique to the table. PS: I'm apple fan, but not sheep to accept anything they bring blindly.

It was raining a bit yesterday and that made the fingerprint sensor on my phone basically useless. I forgot how much it was used (unlock, banking apps, payments).

I'm reminded how finicky it is every time I step out of the shower. Even a bit of humidity seems to ruin the accuracy. Can't wait to try FaceID

It's definitely a bit flaky with wet fingers and touch button, but the occasional passcode isn't a huge burden.

You make a good point, but to counter, can modern touchscreen phones be used without looking at them? Volume buttons and power off / on can be used without looking, but you can also use those without unlocking your phone.

I don't speak for others, but yes I can navigate from locked phone to messages and type a full message to my wife without looking at the screen, thanks to qwerty knowledge and GBoard's "swipe" typing.

How do you deal with your phone being in different states before unlocking?

For example, if you have an app open in a folder, you'll have to press the home button 3 times: once to exit the app, another to exit the folder, and a third to go home (unless the messages app is on the dock, then you can press twice to reach it).

I'd be worried about messaging the wrong person, and I also have fat fingers so that's no help :(