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Comment by oneeyedpigeon | Hacker News Reader

I don't think anyone's considering faceid a "wow" factor in terms of its high security (or lack thereof). It's hard to get the general public excited about levels of security. Face ID is pretty much a hack, one that's existed on android phones for many years, that Apple has to polish as best it can.

I didn't watch the keynote: do they have touch ID on the back?

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>> Face ID is pretty much a hack

>> I didn't watch the keynote

This is nothing like the version that's been available on Android for years. Read up on it or watch the keynote before jumping to wild conclusions.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that it was "bad" when I said "hack". I meant that it was introduced in order to solve a problem introduced by another design change (i.e. the removal of touch ID).

Well they introduced completely new dedicated hardware components that I've never seen in a smartphone to enable this feature. For me "hack" doesn't do the feature justice.

If using a 30k dot projector, 2 cameras (one IR), and a neural network processor is your idea of a 'hack', I'd love to see what you think an elegantly designed solution is!

You should watch the keynote then. Calling it "existed on android phones" is borderline incorrect as it uses infrared sensors to match 3D models of your face.

Yes, the "hack"-version existed in Androids. You know, the one that can be unlocked with any photo of your face.

This one goes a bit deeper with IR and depth mapping.

There is no TouchID on the X

Nope, no Touch ID. The presenter also failed to unlock via Face ID several times in a row, prompting a "please enter your pin to unlock phone message". Worst time for it to happen.

You are seriously misrepresenting what happened. The display phone was showing the “passcode is required to unlock” screen that iPhones show when they are cold-booted.

Huge mistake, IMO. People really love touch id, and it would've essentially been 'free' had they just moved it to the back. I've been using Huawei's equivalent on the Nexus 6P for over a year now, and it works like a dream.

> People really love touch id

What? TouchID effectively hands your entire phone contents over to the Feds, as it's significantly easier to compel a fingerprint than a passcode.

There is absolutely nothing to "love" about TouchID, unless you work in law enforcement.

The same applies to facial recognition too.

For “several” = 1, unless i missed something...

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