To me FaceID makes zero sense. The majority of times I unlock my phone when it’s laying flat on the tabel and away from me. I typically don’t pick up my phone to read a message, so FaceID will require me to move my entire face and upper body to unlock the phone. This is also why I don’t get the point of having the fingerprint reader on the back like many Android phones.

I wouldn’t argue that Apple drop FaceID, but at least put the fingerprint censor back, so we can choose between ToucID or FaceID. I believe that many would choose TouchID.

Surely this depends on the situation. In many lying flat situations, Face ID does work. If you want to read a notification (eg a message) while you have gloves on (eg if you’re skiing) then Face ID plus raise to wake are a massive improvement, though of course you have to take your goggles off.

Sure, there are situations where Face ID is preferable, but I have to agree with the parent commenter here. The situations where my phone lies flat on the table but can’t be unlocked without me picking it up or moving in position for the camera to recognize me significantly outnumber the occasions where gloves or wet hands prevent me from unlocking my device. It’s not close at all.

Touch ID is much more convenient and reliable in my opinion.

Still boggles my mind that the Apple device you always use sitting directly in front of has a fingerprint sensor and the Apple device that I use at arms length, laying on my side, glancing down to at an angle, on its side, upside down etc now needs to be directly in front of me and one specific orientation to unlock.

I'm sure that's a huge help for people who like to check their notifications or other things on their phone while it's sitting on the desk without picking it up. There are tons of situation where your face is not in front of the phone yet you would still like to unlock it without contorting you or it, and how well face I'd work or not has nothing to do with it.

Yes, that's one of the occasions where I have noticed it not working well. I guess it just depends on how often you do that and how annoying you find it to have to lift the phone up a bit. Not a big deal for me.

Or having to remove your sunglasses, or when you have a face mask on, or when the ambient sunlight/IR is too high for the sensor to read the tracking dots it projects on your face.

FaceID introduced a huge swath of new failure modes while simultaneously reducing security. Not acceptable.

FaceID works totally fine with your sunglasses on and in bright light... It does fail if you have a mask on, if you have goggles covering half your face, or if you have a helmet that covers your face... but to me that is all completely understandable.

And also something that you can partially alleviate with alternative appearances in the FaceID settings, depending on how much of your face you're covering.

Seems comparable to:

- not working with gloves on

- not working when too hot (sweat) or too cold (?)

- changing your grip to get a good print placement

Yes, I will admit that it's not great with a face mask. But then that wasn't really an issue until a few weeks ago. Never had problems with glasses or too much sunlight but that might just be a perk of living in a country that's not particularly sunny.

>until I finally bought a new iPhone and realised that FaceID actually worked much better than I expected

Found the opposite, it actually worked far worse than I expected. I can no longer use my phone in bed without having to hold it right up to my face because the tech only works one way up.

Found the rest of the innovations it brought underwhelming, like it can tell when I look away for 10 seconds to dim the screen but it doesn't undim it when I look back or the utterly confusing logic for showing me full notifications or not. The amount of times I've had to unlock my phone just to check through notifications is crazy.

My iPhone 11 consistently feels like a downgrade in user experience from my 7, even the camera everyone raves so much about doesn't seem that much better to justify how much of the case it now takes up.

FaceID does work quite well, but what if wearing masks becomes normalized because of Covid-19? I don't know how well FaceID would work with a mask on. (Of course the same thing happens with gloves and TouchID, so maybe there's no good solution)

Can you check your emails discretly during a meeting if you need to stare at your phone close?

How's it going with that face mask you're wearing? (of course I supposed you could be wearing gloves too in which case they both suck)

Works fine if you set up an alternate appearance in FaceID settings.

Easy - just stay at home and you don't have to wear a mask :p

But why would gloves cause trouble with FaceID? Apart from the fact that you probably shouldn't touch your phone with your gloved hand to begin with.

> But why would gloves cause trouble with FaceID?

They cause trouble with TouchID. That's the comparison.

You can set up a second face which I think was added specifically for masks which have always been common in Asia.

> TouchID

TouchID is still almost always better than FaceID. Unless you don't have a thumb, I suppose.

TouchID had a 50% failure rate for me; FaceID works essentially perfectly. YMMV.