[TheAnimus]

I had this feature on my 950 (Windows Phone). It was poor.

Slower and more error prone. Environmental changes such as extreme lighting (being outside) or wearing sunglasses stopped it from working.

Windows Hello and compatible webcams work really well in a stable desktop environment mind. I've just rolled them out across my firm.

[mrtksn]

No, you didn't have Face ID on your 950, you had whatever you had.

It's Apple's speciality to take good ideas that were never implemented properly and do it properly.

[andrepd]

Oh, you didn't have this Apple (TM) brand name feature, you just had the feature. I guess that makes it... better?

[soperj]

Like Apple Maps?

[hota_mazi]

And also to take good ideas and never implement them because somebody already did it before them.

Even if that idea was good.

[zherbert]

Come on, your 950 didn't make a 3d dot-map of your face. This is very different.

[TheAnimus]

Yes it did an infra-red dot map of the face.

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-iris-scanner-lumia-950-an...

Amazing, -4 for mentioning this isn't a new feature. This is exactly how the kinect works, how windows hello enabled webcams work.

[rmrfrmrf]

I'm simply shocked that Microsoft would go first-to-market with an inferior product.

[wlesieutre]

Samsung also has facial recognition on the S8. You can bypass it by printing out a photo of the owner's face. But I would expect Apple's implementation to be more secure and more reliable than previous poor implementations, otherwise they wouldn't be doing it.

[zeusk]

What a load of bull. A simple photo doesn't work, there was a lot more work involved in subduing the facial recognition on S8.

[Joeri]

I alo had a lumia 950. It does not have face recognition, it has an iris scanner. An infrared light lights up your eyes and then the camera makes an IR picture where it analyzes your iris pattern. The reason it didn't work well is that your eyes had to be open (no squinting, like in bright light), close enough to capture a precise image and in exactly the right spot for the zoomed in camera. I eventually learned a gesture that unlocked it semi-reliably, but it was basically holding the phone right up to my face in the exact right spot.

Now that I see how apple is doing face id I think it will work more reliably ... eventually. I doubt they'll get it right on the first try because this is the kind of feature that has to bake in the real world (like apple maps). Still, they may surprise us like they did with the equally hard touch id feature.