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Comment by mikestew | Hacker News Reader

Except TouchID, from what I gather, actually works. Not "works" in the sense of keeping bad people out, but "works" in the sense that when I use it my phone unlocks. I tried face unlock briefly on the Google Nexus I've got and disabled it shortly after when I found that it was unreliable. Poor lighting, too much lighting, a bad hair day, it wasn't even at 80% for successful unlocks.

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> Not "works" in the sense of keeping bad people out, but "works" in the sense that when I use it my phone unlocks.

I think that's the key distinction here. In any given authentication scheme it's important not to have false positives (incorrectly identifying a bad guy as you) or false negatives (incorrectly identifying you as a bad guy). In this case false positives break security, false negatives break usability. However, false positives won't outright stop adoption whereas false negatives will.

To be honest, I disabled face unlock the moment my brother unlocked it with his face... Yeah, touch id won't let that happen.

Fake unlock was slow and unreliable when it first came out 2 years ago but is pretty darn good nowadays, and just as fast as TouchID. No, it doesn't work in pitch dark or if you're wearing sunglasses. But I'll take "works 90% of the time" over an unlock feature that requires a hardware component that pretty much locks you into 1 form factor.

The problem is that you need to think about this when you unlock your phone. With TouchID you always unlock your phone with your finger.

"With TouchID you always unlock your phone with your finger"

With glove, dirty or too much sweat, I believe it does not work. So, it's not 'always'.

Not to mention, by the time I am looking at the phone, I want it already unlocked. Sometimes I want it unlocked in my pocket (Siri?). TouchID allows me to do that. Face unlock does not.

When it works fast, face unlock can be rather stunning. Occasionally it would catch a glimpse of my face obliquely and unlock before I even got to position it correctly.

However like others, I turned it off because the performance was highly variable, and the failure mode consists of a many-seconds wait which can be extremely infuriating (even embarrassing, as as you stare blankly at your phone for 5 seconds at a party, trying to quickly get someone's number or something).

does touchid have the disadvantage of keeping your friends and family unable to use your phone in cases of emergency? 95% of the time, my phone isnt next to adversaries, but trusted parties. a password or code is transferrable, fingerprint isnt.

edit; not 911emergency, but casual situations of full or dirty hands..

You can add ten fingers, or you can give them your code, or they can dial 911 with a fully locked phone. So no, it's slightly easier for a relative to use in an emergency than a typical locked phone.

Mine when locked has a small touch section labeled 'emergency call'. I assume it goes through to 911 (or relevant number). I'm tempted to press it but it's not an emergency. I assumed most phones had something similar.

Edit: I went to it. I leads to a special dialer. Instead of voicemail the button leads to a special emergency contact (or list). It only shows 4 inputs on top so I am guessing that is the limit so you can't dial anything but emergency services (that are 4 numbers or shorter). Then it goes back to my lock screen.

You can always just use a PIN to unlock. It's probably safe to assume that Apple has thought this through (no need to remind me of the supposed chaos break-in).

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