Does FaceID on Apple iPhone X work?

Bezel-less screens are the rage these days and on the tenth anniversary of the iPhone, Apple announced the iPhone X. While this flagship smartphone features a 5.8inch bezel-less display, Apple has eliminated the home button and touchID with an all-new FaceID for unlocking the iPhone X. Some of the Android smartphone manufacturers had introduced face recognition in the past but those could be easily surpassed using a photograph. Apple claims FaceID to be secure, that cannot be unlocked using any image or even a 3D mask. There is a TrueDepth camera at the front that enables FaceID. It projects and analyses more than 30,000 invisible dots to create a precise depth map of your face, which is not easy to fool. This information is encrypted and secured by a secure enclave on the iPhone X and is never backed up on the cloud. While all this sounds like a fancy technology, the question is does FaceID really works?

We configured the FaceID on the iPhone X review unit we received yesterday and to our surprise, it lives up to the claims.

Configuring FaceID was simple yet fun. Just the way we move our finger around the fingerprint sensor, I had to look into the front camera and move my face left, right, up and down; as if I was doing some facial exercise. I configured the FaceID without warning glasses and every time it worked smoothly. All I had to do was to look into the front camera and the iPhone X would unlock.  But when I tried unlocking the FaceID wearing glasses, it failed to unlock twice. It seemed that the FaceID was learning as when tried unlocking for the third, fourth and fifth time, it worked. In the default FaceID settings, one has to pay attention and look into the TrueDepth camera to unlock the phone. When tried unlocking with closed eyes, it refused to unlock. We also tried unlocking the phone with an image and a video but yet again, our efforts went in vain.

But there is a setting under accessibility - Require Attention for FaceID - which can be turned off for unlocking the iPhone X with closed eyes as well. While most of us will prefer not to turn off this feature, there will be many users who might need to.

Unlike five fingerprints for Touch ID, you can only add one FaceID, with a backup Pin password. All the authentication which required TouchID is now using FaceID. So while logging into my Twitter account, the iPhone X fetched my user-name and password from the iCloud using FaceID authentication. For downloading apps from the App Store, I had to double press the side button/power key and look into the FaceID camera for authentication. The FaceID should also work with Amazon for accessing order details or for logging into Paytm account but I am yet to test these apps.

In our testing, Apple's FaceID not just lived up to our expectations but also managed to impress us. The much awaited iPhone X will go on sale in India on November 3, the same time when it goes on sale in the international market.