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Comment by brimble | Hacker News Reader

I was one of the people who could never get the damn thing to work right. And re-training it a few times a year just to get it back up to a ~50% success rate, because of humidity changes, was no fun. Eventually I just started using a code again, since I'd end up there more often than not anyway. But it seems like it was probably awesome for people who didn't have trouble with it.

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I'm also one of those who could never get the Apple fingerprint reader to work well--for me it was 50/50 whether it worked or not. Like the parent I ended up switching back to code entry which was usually quicker anyway. So when I moved over to Android I was very suspicious whether the Android implementation would be any better--and in fact it is miles better. My Samsung S21 recognises my fingerprint around 9 times out of 10. It works even in situations (e.g. sweaty fingers) where the Apple implementation would not work at all. What makes me even more impressed is that the S21 has the fingerprint reader embedded into the screen, whereas Apple had the advantage of a dedicated space for the fingerprint reader without a screen getting in the way. YMMV of course but now I understand how nice it is just to press your fingerprint and it just works. Wonder if there are people who have unusual features in their fingerprint that causes Apple's implementation to struggle?

> it is miles better. My Samsung S21 recognises my fingerprint around 9 times out of 10

That second sentence doesn’t imply the first one. The Samsung could have a lower false positive rate (letting the registered fingerprint unlock the phone more often) at the cost of a higher false negative rate (letting unregistered fingerprints unlock the phone more often)

In the limit, if it rolled a ten sided die for any press of its button, and unlocked the phone unless it rolled a one, that would give users the impression that it recognizes their fingerprint 90% of the time.

(Of course, “doesn’t imply” doesn’t mean the first sentence isn’t true, either. It may be genuinely better, or Samsung might have chosen a different cut-off, sacrificing security for a gain in usability. I wouldn’t know. Do any phone reviews test these things at all?)

IIRC my touchID phone was one of the early ones to have it (a 7+, maybe? I don't recall for sure). I've used I think three different Apple laptops with touchID, and they've all worked fine. It could be that early versions of the hardware didn't like something about my skin, but later versions (by the time they started putting them in laptops) were fine. I hold on to phones quite a while, so my next upgrade after that had faceID. In fairness to Apple, I didn't try any of their later touchID-equipped models of phones.

There have only been two generations of Touch IDs on iPhones. The 5s and SE gen 1 have the first generation Touch ID and the rest have the second.

The second gen was noticeably faster, I don’t know if it was more reliable.

I recall that Touch ID on both the 5s and the 7 was equally poor for me so it doesn't seem that the second generation has improved things for me at least.

I wonder why fingerprint readers act up for some people, is there some sort of physiological reason? It works perfectly for me, but I've seen how much a tech-savvy friend of mine struggled with it (for them, faceid was a godsend).

I suspect it's got something to do with skin oils or natural variation in skin moisture. I know that big humidity swings were guaranteed to ruin it for me. Air gets dry in the winter, touch unlock drops to maybe 20% success rate at best. Fix it by re-training, then in late Spring it does it again when the air gets wetter.

The ones on their laptops, however, have been reliable. Possibly there was a generational improvement in the equipment before it hit the laptops, and my problems were just because I had an early model on my phone.

I'm not on an iPhone, but I might have an insight about this.

My home country is a very humid tropical country in Asia.

When I was in the United States (I was in a cold dry place), the fingerprint reader works perfectly. Instantly. Never had to try a 2nd time.

In my home country, it works like 40% of the time.

However, if I'm in an air conditioned room in my home country (the AC sucks out all the humidity), then the finger print reader starts working perfectly again.

So, humidity and moisture/sweat on my hands might have been a factor.

Yes, skin types can affect how well it works. Also age, older people’s fingerprints often become less pronounced and harder to read.

I am that way with Face ID. Even under optimal conditions I can never get it to work more than 50-60% of the time.

Face ID, at least on the iPhone 13, is almost perfect for me once I rescanned my face from below since I'm usually peering down at it. Maybe try that.

You'll have to do that anyway again for the masked unlock feature. It scans the top half of your head more thoroughly, so requires you to look down at the phone.

Yeah for me it works great. I feel like now everything opens automatically as long as the thing is in the general direction of my face, whereas one used to have to constantly make a conscious action (push the fingerprint reader).

Yeah, to be clear, the fingerprint reader is what never worked well for me. 2-3x a year of re-training because it'd stop working at all if the air (and so, my skin) got too dry, or too wet. Pretty bad success rate even when it was "working". Masks aside, face unlock has worked great for me.

[EDIT] But if touch-to-unlock had worked for me, and if I had to take one or the other, I might prefer it.

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