> they are trying to sell a feature that is only due to their engineering team unable to put TouchID on the Iphone X

I highly doubt it’s easier to add FaceID than TouchID to any phone.

I remember reading some articles about the difficulty to have a fingerprint sensor under a screen, it might well have been easier to have FaceID (easier does not mean easy)

Gruber:

> Apple made this decision well over a year ago. Perhaps the fundamental goal of iPhone X was to get as close as they could to an edge-to-edge display. No chin whatsoever. There were, of course, early attempts to embed a Touch ID sensor under the display as a Plan B. But Apple became convinced that Face ID was the way to go over a year ago. I heard this yesterday from multiple people at Apple, including engineers who’ve been working on the iPhone X project for a very long time. They stopped pursuing Touch ID under the display not because they couldn’t do it, but because they decided they didn’t need it. I do believe it’s true that they never got Touch ID working, but that’s because they abandoned it in favor of Face ID early.

> I don’t know why recent supply chain rumors suggest Apple was scrambling to get Touch ID working on iPhone X as late as this summer, and no one at Apple seems to know either. Disinformation campaign from competitors?

They could have put the fingerprint sensor on the back, as several Android phones do.

And they could also install a hardware keyboard. Neither of which is going to happen. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.

Fingerprint reader on the back is unobtrusive and quite an intuitive way to unlock a phone. I can hardly find any issue or "major compromise" with it.

A physical keyboard on the other hand makes a phone at least twice as thick, twice as heavy, and twice as ugly (although the last one is more subjective).

If I had a dollar for every time I watched someone turn their Android phone around to look for the fingerprint sensor on the back, I would have a lot more free time to post on HN.

> It's unlikely that someone will be able to unlock my phone without me knowing it when using TouchID

Do you really think it's likely that someone will steal your phone and then trick you into looking at your own phone without you realizing it? At that point you might as well be tricked into putting your finger on a TouchID sensor.

Well it's definitely possible to have me looking my phone held by someone else. And it's then too late...

Yea, it’s possible a thief would be so brazen as to return to the scene of the crime and show you your stolen phone just to unlock it (instead of just assaulting you till you unlocked it). Who are you worried about, the Mission Impssibke team?

You would also have to make the 3D print mimic the same infrared emission patterns as the original person’s.

It's a competitive move; it gives Apple and their users a bragging point, causing competition an expensive countermove. Competition has to move to depth sensor cameras and more on their phones, while Apple is reducing the expense and improving the quality of theirs. The Face ID tech is immature today, but a quarter or three? The quarter after that once support issues have had a few cycles, and the Face ID team has iterated, refactored and refreshed... This is a basic tech deployment they'll only improve.

The real question to me, a person in the FR industry, will Apple iterate their camera hardware and extend the perception depth range to be competitive in the larger FR surveillance industry? The general FR industry has to recognize multiple people at a distance, and then IoT-like control other hardware, a game Apple is not touching with Face ID - yet.

Pardon my ignorance. FR industry? Foreign Relations? First Responder? Flame Resistant? Google was no help. Edit: Oh, do you mean facial recognition?

FR = Farseical Reality :-)

FR = Facial Recognition.

I think FaceID won't be as good, either, but Apple has surprised me before (with TouchID, no less). The iPhone X definitely seems to be the experimental phone, which I'm glad to see.

I hope they continue the product lines they currently have for the phone: the experimental expensive one, the "normal" and Plus iterative ones, and the not-as-fancy-but-fits-in-my-small-hands one.

- More secure (Face ID uses more data points)

- Less user-interaction to authenticate (though as you point out this is also a negative)

- Allows for other UX improvements, e.g., maintaining screen lighting while phone is being observed but not manipulated

- My speculation: capacity to add additional faces will be added with SW (or next HW) update

__

I don't understand your point #3. How do you think someone would unlock your phone with Face ID?

For their Point #3 I'm guessing they are saying if they are sleeping or a mugger points their phone at their face. Fortunately, Face ID has focus detection, so if you aren't looking at it then it won't unlock. Which makes point #3 moot as well.

Apple has mitigated this, your eyes need to be open and looking at the screen to be unlocked.

It requires your face + your attention.

One common scenario where I often have problems with TouchID and FaceID should solve them: wet hands.

I just train my wet and dry prints separately, as separate fingers. If you promise no to tell any would be thief/gov about the backdoor into my phone, I’ve done the same for my capacitive glove finger.

That, and gloves!