[allannienhuis]

"Why anyone wanted to unlock their door with their phone instead of tapping a fob, "

I would want to do it with my phone because then I only have to have one thing to carry around with me. I haven't carried a key ring in years. I don't even carry a wallet these days. It's really quite useful. Way fewer trips back to fetch the keys/wallet, etc.

[throwaway19972]

> I would want to do it with my phone because then I only have to have one thing to carry around with me.

I would prefer this to be a keyring over a phone for aforementioned reasons. Secondly, the app is buggy and often just fails to work. Third, it takes a good deal of time to take out the phone and fumble around with the software.

All in all, it's a pretty miserable experience.

[allannienhuis]

I rarely need to open the software to make my car open the door automatically. Once in a blue moon I need to actually open the app to force it to connect. I actually can't remember the last time I needed to do that. It's normally completely seamless. The phone stays in my pocket - the doors unlock when I'm nearby, and lock when I leave.

That's my experience of course, other car apps might be much different. But that's an issue with the implementation, not the concept.

[easton]

Maybe, but if you really don’t want to carry stuff around then it’s optimal to just type the code in (…which is why it makes zero sense that the keypads suck. except that they were being cheap.)

[allannienhuis]

Then what I'm carrying around is a bunch of codes in my head which is its own form of baggage, or I re-use the codes and that comes with the same risks as reusing passwords has. Using the phone for everything has risks too, but I think not much differently than a password manager does, and most phones I've used have a reasonable device recovery process (not that I've had to use them or have expertise in that area...).

Carrying a single thing (which has a bunch of other uses than just access control) doesn't feel like a burden to me.

That said, I don't disagree at all that the typical keypad for access control on everything pretty much sucks. My front door has like 4 buttons only and does the telephone keyboard thing of using the same button for multiple 'numbers' in your code. Time to jump on amazon to look for a decent front door lock that works with my phone :)