From the so far leaked rumors I don’t see anything to justify the price. If anything there is a regression with the absence of TouchID. But I guess we will have to wait and see in two days.
What's so innovative about the screen? All the components at the top of the phone are still present in a blocked out section. It's not like they figured out how to conceal those components beneath the screen, which is what we're truly waiting for. Until the front of the phone is 100% screen space (perhaps minus a very thin bezel), it's certainly not worth the hype.
Edit: I went back and looked at the latest leaked photos. It's better than I remember. The phone looks decent enough when the screen is off, but very gimmicky when the screen is lit. It looks like they went as far as they could, realized they couldn't deliver any better, and so left that top section of the phone in what is essentially an unfinished state. I suspect the innovation I'm holding out for will happen by iPhone 10 or 11.
All face authentication schemes are a joke and can be broken soon after release. Fingerprint auth can be broken, too, but it's orders of magnitude more difficult to "clone" someone's fingerprint than it is to copy one of their pictures from the internet, or from a CCTV camera, etc.
Even if the system uses infrared or 3D images or whatever, it's just a matter of developing an advanced enough algorithm to deal with that, which shouldn't take that long if the target market is there (hundreds of millions of iphones with such an auth system).
So were fingerprint scanners before Apple's take on it.
>but it's orders of magnitude more difficult to "clone" someone's fingerprint
You can do this by taking a photo of a finger or lifting a print.
>copy one of their pictures from the internet, or from a CCTV camera, etc.
A 2d photo won't unlock FaceID. There are 3D sensors on the front for a reason.
>Even if the system uses infrared or 3D images or whatever, it's just a matter of developing an advanced enough algorithm to deal with that, which shouldn't take that long if the target market is there (hundreds of millions of iphones with such an auth system).
And you think 3D printing a skull, eyes, and possibly blood vessels is easier than copying a finger? Why do you act like you know so much about something that hasn't been tested in the wild?
Even the FBI had trouble getting into an iPhone. 3D printing a face might be a real solution in situations like that. Of course, for the average person, face id is probably just as secure as touch.
It will still have the same constraints as normal TouchID, so it will lock after 48 (72?) hrs and will only unlock with passcode. It might be marginally easier for FBI but I imagine 3D printing an acceptable face will be tough, especially if it uses IR on top of 3D cameras.
TouchID is amazingly reliable and fast, unless your hands are sweaty or greasy at all. In this case, almost every single time I have to click the home button multiple times until it stops trying to read my print and show the pin prompt for manual entry. Even then, it'll sometimes register the previous click (which is supposed to just bring up the pin screen) as a fingerprint unlock attempt, and will attempt to fill in the pin again right in the middle of me manually entering it, making it fail 3 or more times before I can enter my pin.
I've tried disabling it completely in favor of the pin, but in all honesty the 90% of the time my hands aren't sweaty or greasy it works so much faster that I just deal with the 10% and keep it enabled.
These could just be sweaty guy problems, but I'm definitely looking forward to face unlock.