I've had an iPhone XR since essentially the release date, so I've been using it as my daily phone for over a year, upgrading from an iPhone SE.

This is enough time to realize that I really, truly, hate Face ID.

Maybe some day I'll screed on precisely why, but here's it in a nutshell: I just had a failed attempt to Face ID my leg. I'd used Siri a second before, and didn't close the screen while I carried it into the next room. It tried to Face ID maybe my face as I brought it down after reading Siri's response, then haptic'd again for another fail after I'd lowered it in my hand to beside my thigh.

This happened in my home.

It happens all the freaking time when I'm running too. Or when I'm driving and need the map to come back. Or when I'm walking around the house listening to podcasts or whatever and have had the phone open recently.

Face ID guesses it's time to ID me in all sorts of stupid situations where there's no face in sight. Argh.

And what happens when it fails because it tried to ID me when I didn't want it to? It makes me enter my passcode. My passcode is not a four digit number. I can't enter it safely when driving. I can't enter it easily when running. I hate entering it at home when the Face ID lock wasn't my fault.

(Let's not even get started with how many times Face ID doesn't realize it's me. That's at least once or twice a day, and sometimes more than five. And sometimes that locks the Face ID and I have to enter my passcode. 

 And at some point I'm going to do a video of how it handles beards, aka the "ignore your chin" feature. I shaved a beard once and could unlock my iPhone by holding a scrunched towel over the bottom of my face.)

You know what I like? Touch ID. I like Touch ID because it only tries to ID me when I actively ask it to. It doesn't guess when I want to check my ID -- and guess wrong -- like Face ID.

I hope this iPhone SE 2 is a real thing, because I'll be one of the first in line to get an A13 chip with a Touch ID. The XR is nice, but the Face ID is infuriating.

Edit 13 Feb 2020: You know, I wonder how much of this is because I use the option not to require attention when using Face ID.

Of course the reason I don't require attention is because I often want to "no look" unlock my phone. Why I have to stop what I'm doing and stare intently at my phone to open it, I have no idea. It's painful. It's not easier than dropping my finger on the phone briefly, which I can do no matter what direction my gaze is pointed.

I hate Face ID. ;^) Ain't for me.

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