Can you explain what about the touch-less gestures you found useful? Like, if I'm already holding the phone in my hand and I want to give it input signal, why would I want to avoid touching it?
I could wave my hand to check the time. Or see what was causing the most recent notification chime. It sounds really simple but not having to pick up the phone meant reducing distraction.
The Moto X's gestures couldn't be much more than a hand wave due to the simplicity of the sensor. But even so, they kept me from picking up my phone quite a bit.
Neither the fingerprint sensor or face recognition work in this situation unfortunately. I have to use glove liners with touchscreen-compatible fingertips to enter my password.