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The gesture system, for me at least, is also far easier to pick up visually by glancing .. it's much easier to obscure which numbers you are tapping.

I found it easier to pick up visually as well, and thus more difficult to hide from anyone who may be trying to see it.

On the other hand it's really hard to describe your gesture to someone if you're lending them your phone, unlike a PIN which is easy to relay verbally; you really need to demonstrate the gesture.

I map the points to numbers and give them that -- it winds up being exactly the same as telling people a PIN.

But on the other hand, I can do it (I think) quicker than entering a PIN code, and without looking at my phone. Always a tradeoff...

Only half my gesture lock is visible like that.

I do change it from time to time which may have played a part in that though.

Fortunately you can use PINs with arbitrary length on Android, too.

Prior to 2.2 you couldn't, and there are a ton of Android devices out there that will never see that update.