Re-Trigger Face ID. While I’m a huge fan of Face ID, there’s no denying I get more failed authentication attempts with it than with Touch ID. At first when this would happen, I would hit the side button to put the iPhone to sleep, then Raise to Wake to give it a second try. Fortunately, I later learned you could re-trigger an authentication simply by leaning the device away from you, then bringing it back where the TrueDepth camera can see you. This is a much better alternative, but it turns out Apple has an even better solution in iOS 12: when Face ID fails to authenticate, you can trigger another attempt simply by swiping up from the bottom of the screen, just like you do to go Home.
This somewhat addresses one of my biggest issues with Face ID. It fails a lot, which is a problem, but that’s compounded by the fact that it’s really confusing what I need to do once it fails. I’d still prefer a simple tap target on the screen to retry but I’ll take this.
However it doesn’t give me faith that the next version of Face ID will bring a big improvement to reliability. I may still be looking for a Touch ID model this fall, if it’s available.