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Comment by fnoff | Hacker News Reader

For me the biggest advantage of faceid is that it isn't bothered by wet fingers or gloves. It works most of the time, where I remember struggling more (though still not often) with touchid. This was with an iphone 8, so I don't know how good they are now.

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Yea true, guess im just not wet enough often enough that i completly forgot about that

This. I’d complain more about Face ID if Apple Pay wasn’t the first payment mechanism I’ve used that reliably fulfills the promise of being faster/easier than cash, and Face ID + mechanical button is a big part of that.

Still, Apple Pay was way more reliable with TouchID.

Step 1 : take the phone off your pocket Step 2 : put it against the terminal while touching (not pressing) the home button. Step 3 : there is no step 3, you already paid because even if the phone wasn’t unlocked the NFC reader automatically unlocked it, opened your default card and validated the payment thanks to your finger being on the reader.

Compared to FaceID, no need to double press a button and to watch your screen waiting for the little animation to finish.

Don’t get me wrong, paying with FaceID totally works and it’s fast. But paying with TouchID wasn’t fast, it was instant and thoughtless.

FaceID is much slower than TouchID, FaceID fails with wet glasses, it fails with a breathing mask. I can’t use the phone with wet fingers or gloves so needing a bare dry finger for TouchID is fine. FaceID annoyingly worse.

The big problem for me is using FaceID in bed. Unless you sleep on your back, the pillow obscures your face.

All you typically need to do is lift your head up so FaceID can get a clear look... but when I'm sleepy, it's annoying.

Ideally, the phone would just have both... somehow... but this seems technically infeasible so I get it

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