Hacker News Reader

Comment by thom | Hacker News Reader

I upgraded to the 13 Pro Max from the 8 Plus and I’m still annoyed several times a day by interactions that are strictly worse without the touch sensor. Today it was because you used to be able to unlock just by holding your phone with your thumb on the sensor. But now you have to raise it to your face, hope it works after a couple of goes with your sunglasses on, and then even when it does you have to swipe up to see what you were last looking at. It made checking a map on a webpage repeatedly feel like torture. It’s a tax on every single interaction with my phone and while I love the storage and the screen I have thought about ditching it.

View on HN

You're right, unlocking the phone every single time you want to interact with it is exceedingly tedious.

Which is why I remove the FaceID/passcode completely. The overall improvement to my QoL is well worth the increased risk. And all my truly sensitive apps are passcode protected, anyway.

This would change my life! FaceId protect specific Apps + Settings.

Let guests (or myself) use Google Maps, Calculator, etc without a lock screen.

There is also the middle ground of a lock timeout - if you use your phone more than, say, once an hour, it'll never lock, but if you drop it on the ground and it sits there for an hour it'll be locked if someone finds it.

I also miss the fingerprint sensor. It’s fast and effective. I wish they would add it to the power button or if they can improve the tech, under the screen.

Driving in the car with a Face ID phone is a nightmare. You hand it to the passenger to look at, it’s locked, you have to try to look at it while your driving, then if you get unlucky and it locks you have to enter your passcode while you’re driving (I have an alphanumeric passcode and it’s very hard to enter if I’m not looking at the phone). Touch ID, I could just plop my thumb on the home button without looking.

I have a magic keyboard with TouchID and it's made me really nostalgic for phones with TouchID. Never need to tilt my head or raise my hand to log into anything anymore.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com