Face ID not all it is cracked up to be

News article about FaceID

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Here is sort of counter-argument at another article

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tonybradley/2017/11/05/enough-already-with-the-stupid-face-id-twin-test/#e9d2bda5e1fb

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I’ve no twin, so I’m all good! Since Friday, it’s only failed me once. Works very fast. At first I thought I wouldn’t like it, but it’s growing on me. Makes it so easy I just lift my phone and unlocks.

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So no worse than Voice ID?

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I’ve had the X since Friday. I’ve had to enter my passcode once, this is an improvement compared to Touch ID in my own personal experience.

Apple has put a lot of work into this and understandably there will be instances where it can be fooled (i.e. twins) but surely we all expect that?!

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I mean, the article is a case where they weren’t twins and really don’t look alike - is that understandable?

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They are clearly the ‘1 in 1 million’ :wink:

I don’t know how many of these phones exist, but if there are eventually 10 million we can expect it to happen for 10 people.

Read their reddit posts - they admit they hand the phone to the other, type in the passcode, and so the phone learns the other users face. It’s not simply trying to scan and accepting him - they’re literally teaching it to learn the other face.

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In that case it seems more like a feature than an issue. It’s seems pretty cool you can still train face Id to recognise two people, for those of us who share a phone (my wife and I both habe our fingerprints registered on each other’s devices, and I was a bit annoyed that of face Id was to become the norm, then we’d not be able to do that anymore, as officially you can register only one face per device.)

Non-news, let me train my brother up by constantly manually unlocking the phone via PIN code while aimed at his face so it learns his face which is already remarkably similar to mine.

This just reminds me of all the news about Face ID being broken when it messed up at the Apple Conference - even though they explained exactly why and you could see on the device that Face ID was turned off due to invalid attempts previously.

It’s like the Android loving members of the press will do anything to try and knock the phone and also click-bait articles.

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That’s a bit harsh. 6 of one, half a dozen of the other! Remember how much fun Apple had when Samsung phones started exploding…

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Samsung’s phones were actually exploding. The above story seems to be fabricated for clickbait.

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True. It does seem unsubstantiated…

However, I would say FaceID is a little concerning in that someone can just hold your phone up to your face…and it will unlock :confused:

Someone could just hold your finger on the sensor … and it will unlock

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…and this is the problem with all forms of biometric :slight_smile:

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Plus by default the phone requires attention. ie both eyes open and looking at the phone
If someone was to grab my phone off me and then aim it at my face, the last thing I will be doing is starring at the screen giving it my full attention.

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How well this actually works has yet to be seen - happy to accept that if it works, it will be very neat. However, I believe Intel had a similar thing at one point that was meant to do the same…and it really didn’t.

As with all these things, only time will tell :slight_smile:

Who knows, in 2 years everything could be face unlocked?

Regardless of any seen bias towards Apple, with Windows Hello and now FaceID, as well as various Android attempts at Face unlocking over the years (some terrible, some alright), I see the direction of biometric moving that way and less so on Finger Prints and such.

And how it works isnt yet to be seen, it’s been seen :wink:
I just closed my eyes now and tried to unlock my phone, no go. I looked out the window while the Phone was aimed at my face, it didnt unlock. It’s been seen :wink:

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Not sure the sample size is that great :wink:

All software has bugs. Please note, I’m not trying to sh@t on Apple’s achievement - if they’ve cracked it that is awesome! I just would like to wait a few months to reserve judgement on exactly how well it works, and to see the interesting edge cases that emerge before I complete my personal view on whether it is good or not.