Wow, I so much have the opposite experience of you

> Let’s say I get a text, my phone is on the night stand. I just look at it and it already unlocks, no reaching.

My phone is on the table while I'm working. In order for it to see my face I have to pick it up and aim it at my face. With touch id I could just put my finger on top without having to pick it up. So much faster and more convenient.

I find that quite often face id is slow or fails, even if it only fails one out of 30 times that's still one a day and when it does it's frustrating as hell. Something that should take 0.5 seconds ends up taking 10-15. I know that sounds trivial but by the time the phone has unlocked, whatever I was planning to do is often forgotten because of the distraction of trying to get face id to work and then having to manually unlock.

And of course now with mask wearing it basically might as well not exist.

Current Pixel 4 owner here, and former Pixel 2 owner, and I very much miss the fingerprint sensor.

With a fingerprint sensor, the only time my phone would have any trouble unlocking would be if my finger was wet (trivial to fix and re-swipe). Face unlock fails all the time for all sorts of reasons, and is especially useless when I have a mask on (it's nice of Apple to detect masks and bring up the PIN pad without needing an extra swipe, but that's still a weak workaround). Even without a mask, I feel like the failure rate approaches 1% to 2%, which is way too much. For me to feel comfortable using it, I expect something on the order of 0.01%.

Actually I'm not even sure it's the failure rate that gets me. Even after using face unlock for the better part of a year, I still catch myself looking at the phone thinking it's waiting for my face when it isn't, and then I have to swipe up or hit the power button or something. Yes, maybe you can call these UX problems that can be fixed with software, but with a fingerprint sensor I know that when I touch it, my phone will vibrate, and I know immediately if it succeeded or failed.

I think also part of the difference is that Pixel phones have had their fingerprint sensor on the back instead of the front, like iPhones used to have. If the phone is just lying face-up on a table (and I don't want to pick it up), then having it on the front is much easier. But, in reality, I found that was rarely the case for me; usually it'd be in my pocket, or even if it was on a table, I'd want to pick it up anyway. The act of wrapping my hand around the phone would put a finger in roughly the right position to hit the sensor anyway, so it'd be unlocked and ready to use well before I was in a position to read anything off the screen anyway.

Frankly I just really don't like face unlock when compared to a fingerprint sensor.

I have a Pixel 3 and a 2020 iPad Pro. I prefer the fingerprint by far.

The nice part of rear fingerprint sensor is that it's super natural to grab your phone out of your pocket and unlock it in one simple (blind) motion. So you are quite literally never waiting for the phone to unlock, it's always unlocked by the time you lift it from your pocket.

So, as my original comment pointed out, the two “unlock” phases are:

1. Phone standby to phone on (as you describe)

2. In-phone software actions, typically, password manager or locked/private apps (banking, etc)

For case #2, I greatly prefer FaceID. For case #1, it’s a toss up for me.

Oh, I see. But I suppose on a Pixel 4a you could configure both face unlock and the fingerprint scanner and thus get best of both worlds. I personally don't find touching the scanner to be a nuisance for case #2 since its location on a Pixel 2 or 4a's chassis is such that you can do it without fiddling with how you hold your phone (your index finger tends to be near the scanner during phone use, whether one- or two-handed, anyway).

Ok, but interactions of type #2 are probably a hundred time rarer. Personally, I rather like that I have to actively decide to authorize the use of a password.

Yeah, #2 could probably be abused by a malicious app.

My Opinion is that I want that "One More" Action. It tells / reminds me that I am doing something which requires authentication. And that is with my Touch ID.