To me FaceID makes zero sense. The majority of times I unlock my phone when it’s laying flat on the tabel and away from me. I typically don’t pick up my phone to read a message, so FaceID will require me to move my entire face and upper body to unlock the phone. This is also why I don’t get the point of having the fingerprint reader on the back like many Android phones.

I wouldn’t argue that Apple drop FaceID, but at least put the fingerprint censor back, so we can choose between ToucID or FaceID. I believe that many would choose TouchID.

I'm sure that's a huge help for people who like to check their notifications or other things on their phone while it's sitting on the desk without picking it up. There are tons of situation where your face is not in front of the phone yet you would still like to unlock it without contorting you or it, and how well face I'd work or not has nothing to do with it.

>until I finally bought a new iPhone and realised that FaceID actually worked much better than I expected

Found the opposite, it actually worked far worse than I expected. I can no longer use my phone in bed without having to hold it right up to my face because the tech only works one way up.

Found the rest of the innovations it brought underwhelming, like it can tell when I look away for 10 seconds to dim the screen but it doesn't undim it when I look back or the utterly confusing logic for showing me full notifications or not. The amount of times I've had to unlock my phone just to check through notifications is crazy.

My iPhone 11 consistently feels like a downgrade in user experience from my 7, even the camera everyone raves so much about doesn't seem that much better to justify how much of the case it now takes up.

FaceID does work quite well, but what if wearing masks becomes normalized because of Covid-19? I don't know how well FaceID would work with a mask on. (Of course the same thing happens with gloves and TouchID, so maybe there's no good solution)

Can you check your emails discretly during a meeting if you need to stare at your phone close?

How's it going with that face mask you're wearing? (of course I supposed you could be wearing gloves too in which case they both suck)

> TouchID

TouchID is still almost always better than FaceID. Unless you don't have a thumb, I suppose.