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Comment by spullara | Hacker News Reader

FaceID also works in the dark and works with masks. Also works when you have gloves on :)

I used to have my phone unlocked before it was even out of my pocket. FaceID at its fastest (I have a 13 Pro) feels slow.

I haven't had a TouchID phone since 2018 and I still miss it. It never made me wait.

I rarely even think about FaceID whereas I had to actually do something for TouchID. Better experience for me and many others.

You don't think about it even when you see the spinning lock?

Finding the button with my thumb in my pocket was just impulse. Phone unlocked by the time I'm looking at it.

I have to start looking at my phone, watch the screen wake up, FaceID takes a minimum of a half-second? A full second? Feels like an eternity. Longer if I have a mask on but that's only recent, it used to not work with a mask at all.

I think that's my problem. There's nothing I can do to make it faster, I just have to wait for my face to be at the right angle so it can scan me. With my fingerprint, I was fully in control of how fast the unlocking process would be.

FaceID doesn't work if I yawn. Or if I sneeze. Or am squinting in the sunlight. Or if the phone is on my desk, fully readable, but not pointed at my face.

And, yes, all of these cases happened in the past month. I miss the TouchID. It was simple and I can't recall it ever failing me.

Well, some iPhones work with masks — my girlfriend's iPhone 11 doesn't.

Gloves aren't necessary here :) I live in the (allegedly) Brazil's coldest state capital, Curitiba, and you can get through winter here without them.

> Gloves aren't necessary here

Gloves are used in more scenarios than just cold weather, motorcycle gloves for one example.

Wearing motorcycle gloves would make it impossible to touch anything on your screen anyway?

Most gloves accumulate enough dirt over time for touch to start awkwardly working. Some newer ones have a layer applied to the index finger to make it work.

Gloves are not the big problem, my experience is that FaceID is useless when motorcycling because of the helmet.

> FaceID

We are talking about phones without FaceID here. This article and thread are referencing the iPhone SE.

> my experience is that FaceID is useless when motorcycling because of the helmet.

Seems to work fine for me when opening the visor. Do you mean with it closed or open it’s not working for you?

I wear gloves when I ride my bicycle. Unlocking it is necessary to access certain functions that you can invoke with Siri. Even without Siri, most gloves these days are designed to work with capacitive touch.

You're right. Anyway, I don't work or do anything that calls for gloves — haven't use them in… I don't know, 20+ years?

In those scenarios, might as well go with https://www.catphones.com/en-us/cat-s22-flip/

Face ID doesn't work very well in the dark, and it's especially awful if you're lying on your side using an iPad in bed in the dark, since the angle is wrong.

Touch ID was markedly superior in contexts like this, in addition to being easier to activate.

FaceId works perfectly in pitch darkness. I just tried it.

Never had a problem with FaceID in the dark and I lie in bed on my side

It works perfectly fine in dark. I use it every night. It uses a very different tech than just a simple camera.

FaceID works great in the dark (I'm always surprised at how well) and at angles (as long as I'm holding the phone to match the angle of my face, which seems pretty natural to me).

Phone yes. iPad that you are not holding in-hand the entire time so it directly faces you, not so much.

Well, good point. I have a Mini 6, and it doesn't have face ID (and I don't use it in bed).

FaceID sounds way more reliable for you than it is for me. It can't recognise me if I change my glasses.

FaceID definitely didn't work with masks.

But doesn't work with sunglasses.

Yes it does.

Not for me. Looks like it might work if I disable "require attention" (weather has been pretty bad this summer, so I don't have my shades close by to test).

I trained it on my face with and without sunglasses. Maybe it has to do with polarization?

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