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Comment by drewg123 | Hacker News Reader

That's a step in the right direction, but I sorely miss the Android "trusted bluetooth device" that would keep your phone unlocked.

I have really poor timing, and upgraded from a Google Pixel 2 to an iPhone with face id (and no touch id)just before the pandemic. Now I have to type my passcode to unlock whenever I'm wearing a mask because I have a Garmin watch and won't consider downgrading to an Apple watch. The Garmin watch kept my Pixel unlocked for me since it was a trusted bluetooth device.

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I know a lot of people love their Garmin watches. Even though I have an Apple Watch I considered also getting a Garmin just for tracking outdoor workouts.

Other than battery life, the excellent app WorkoutOutDoors roughly replicates the workout functionality of Garmin watches for $10, but with arguably better maps. A feel like I need to mention it when there‘s an opportunity because the solo developer behind it is doing such great work.

http://www.workoutdoors.net/

Very nice app indeed, its offline maps allow me to just leave the phone at home when riding my bike.

Also some very useful features like backing up the on-watch settings, allowing you to restore them if you ever have to reset your Watch.

The battery life is the key issue for me. My watch goes over a week between charges, and Apple watches seem to generally last a day or less. I went through a series of watches before the Garmin, and they either died quickly (MS Band and LG) or their battery life dropped to Apple Watch levels (Polar M600) and I know from experience that they will die at just the wrong time for me.

The Garmin I have is 3 years old and still going strong.

This. The battery in the Apple watch is abysmal. I understand that as a watch its "smarter" than the Garmin watches, but charging a watch everyday is a hard no for me. The Fenix 6x lasts for 2-3 weeks while training every day. I wish the Apple watch would prioritize its battery life.

Anecdotally, in the last few weeks, FaceID just started working for me with a couple of the types of masks I’ve been wearing. I wonder if they have made some tweaks to their recognition algorithms / are doing any sort of additional training on the fly.

I don’t have an Apple Watch, and am running 14.4.2.

Every time you attempt authentication, and it doesn’t recognize you’re wearing a mask in particular, it’ll “retrain” the model when you authenticate with your passcode. If it was only a little bit off, eventually you’d retrain enough to get there with a mask. They mention this in their Security doc if I recall correctly.

I thought that AI could identify someone even if they were wearing a mask and our iPhone's were being silly. I've seen a few videos of Chinese grocery shoppers paying with their face with a mask on.

I don't have any links to back it up or anything, but my impression is that Face ID continually trains itself as you use it to help keep up with facial changes over time. At the very least I know it takes the data from failed attempts immediately followed by passcode unlock and uses it for training.

Depending on how either is implemented I could see it getting "used" to a masked face with enough samples. The question for me is if this makes it more susceptible to false positives, e.g. unlocking for people other than the owner wearing a mask.

Interesting I wonder how it deals with the case of e.g. someone giving their phone to another person (e.g. spouse) who then uses the passcode. I guess they could try and work out if it is a variation of the same person or if it is someone else entirely.

I have my Android phone linked to my Bluetooth headset, so my phone remains unlocked while I'm at my desk - I really like this feature.

Another neat feature was/is "trusted location", where your phone would remain unlocked while at home, for example. I used to have this enabled, but unfortunately the option disappeared after an update on my Xiaomi phone a whole back :(

Aha that explains why I can't find it on my Xiaomi. Was this an stock Android feature or something Xiaomi added in then took out?

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