FaceID is terrible, not even reliable. It scans your face all the time, even when you are not unlocking it. Every 20-30 seconds or so, let's just scan your face.
I would love it if iPhones stayed with fingerprint unlock. Sometimes I put the phone on the desk and not pointing it to my face and I want to unlock it. I have to wait for the stupid FaceID timeout to be able to input my code.
> It’s a smart and useful feature which you can turn off if you don’t like it.
If they hadn't gotten rid of the fingerprint sensor, I'd believe in the sincerity of that statement.
> It is not terrible
The fingerprint sensor was at the perfect location, it worked perfectly. FaceID has the downsides I have outlined and therefore in my opinion absolutely terrible.
> Especially on newer phones which support landscape rotation etc.
I don't understand how you could say "newer phones which support landscape rotation" in 2025 with a straight face. Even iPod Touch 2G supported landscape rotation.
The rotation doesn't help anyway, it is technically capable of detecting it is sitting still on my desk but it still does the FaceID dance first before showing me the passcode prompt which I also don't appreciate along with scanning my face every 30 seconds even when unlocked.
If it can scan it so rapidly, why not show me the passcode prompt or design the UX better so that I can already input my passcode before waiting for the device to decide it sees no face in there?
It can do it better but by design it is too eager to just perform the FaceID unlock and then turn itself into a user presence and attention sensor.
I'd easily pay $100 extra for an iPhone that didn't solely rely on FaceID to log me in and instead gave me a fingerprint sensor it had from generations ago.
> I don't understand how you could say "newer phones which support landscape rotation" in 2025 with a straight face. Even iPod Touch 2G supported landscape rotation.
Waiting for the day when Apple announces supporting recording videos horizontally and the Apple fanatics to go wild as they show off how amazing videos can be when the view is wider than it is tall.
Just not true though is it?
Touch ID had a ton of downsides. It didn’t work with wet or dirty fingers, didn’t work with gloves, if you have clammy hands it would constantly fail. Plus it has a higher false positive rate than Face ID and has less features. Not to mention the speed and UX of Face ID is significantly better for MOST people than Touch ID.
I also meant landscape Face ID recognition, obviously not landscape device orientation.
I remember my iPhone, on my desk, turning up because of a notification, then hearing the vibration for a failed FaceID unlock. This very smart system wasn't able to understand that it was looking at a ceiling. So I always ended up having to type my password due to too many failed FaceID attempts. FaceID was highly ranked in the reasons why I disliked iPhones.
TouchID all the way. On an iPad, it's fantastic.
turn off "attention aware features" under accessibility -> Face ID & Attention if you don't like it checking whether you're looking at it
Face ID is not terrible. Especially on newer phones which support landscape rotation etc. They check to see if you’re looking at the screen and your eyes are open, so they can keep the screen on regardless of the auto lock setting. It’s a smart and useful feature which you can turn off if you don’t like it.