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Comment by lemax | Hacker News Reader

My Face ID is completely broken after getting water on my "waterproof" iPhone X. I downloaded the beta in the hopes of using my Apple Watch to unlock my iPhone without Face ID enabled. My employer enforces a device policy with passcode required immediately and auto-lock in 1 minute, so this would have been really nice. Unfortunately this feature only works a) with Face ID enabled and b) while wearing a mask. Not exactly just "Unlock with Apple with Apple Watch".

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> b) while wearing a mask

Wtf? What possible benefit does this have? Securing your phone against people who stole it (and your watch) but aren't willing to put on a mask?

I wonder if Face ID is still able to partially detect a masked user's face, just with a much lower confidence interval. Maybe the presence of the watch allows Face ID to lower the confidence threshold when it detects a mask blocking half of the face. This is just a guess, I have no idea how Face ID works.

If Face ID can't detect anything when a user wears a mask then I completely agree with you. It seems really silly to require the mask in order for the watch unlock to work. I don't understand the security model there.

It works because you put your watch on, unlock your watch. Your watch remains unlocked until you take it off. I was under the impression if you’re wearing your watch and it’s unlocked, and then you pick up your iPhone, it acts as the key to your phone.

The watch will only unlock your phone when you're wearing a mask. If FaceID doesn't see a mask it will ignore the Apple Watch.

my "waterproof" iPhone X

Oh, wow. I'm usually aware of Apple's new offerings, and I completely missed that there's a "waterproof" version of the iPhone X available. I just have the regular water resistant version.

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