Funny enough it's the opposite for me. TouchID would always fail at the most inopportune times - when I'm sweaty or it's humid and I just want to unlock this damn thing. FaceID fails when it doesn't really matter, I'm in bed and just checking morning email or something. Also the solution for FaceID not working is usually simple - just lift your head. When TouchID wouldn't work it was a lost cause and I'd have to resort to entering my long-ass password.
I had less issues with TouchID on my iPhone 6 than I've had on my iPhone 7 for whatever reason. My hands get pretty oily for whatever reason, the sensor on the iPhone 7 is a lot more picky and I regularly find myself either needing to wipe the home button and my hands down or just sucking it up and entering my passcode.
I'd really like to use a longer passphrase to protect my phone, especially now that iOS 12 has the USB locking feature to protect against threads like greykey - but it's a huge pain in the ass to enter a sufficiently long or complex password or passphrase on a touchscreen keyboard so I haven't bothered due to the aforementioned TouchID issues. I'm actually kind of looking forward to upgrading this year and giving FaceID a go, it's annoying that I have to trade the option of using TouchID for it but all the anecdotal evidence I've found presents a more consistent experience.
The ideal solution for me would be to have both FaceID and TouchID -- but at the back of the phone, like the Pixel.
FaceID works great when I'm at my work desk and have the phone on a charging stand. I can just glance at the phone and it unlocks to show my notifications.
Otherwise, I just want to be able to pick up the phone (from the bedside, from my pocket, etc) and have it already unlocked by the time I look at the screen.
I wash my hands a lot so I don’t think I really had that issue very much. I tried not to touch my phone when I was sweaty without using a towel first. And I have the good fortune to not have a lot of humidity. So maybe I had an idealized experience for touchid and you have an idealized face for faceid. Ha.
I do lift my head but maybe it’s something else I’m doing. I’ll try different angles or maybe open my eyes wider. I just feel like this kind of experimentation kind of flies in the face of the Apple experience that I thought I was paying for.
