Touch ID being Erratic

Can't use with damp hands. That seems to be a common glitch.

smilleresq wrote:

Joe_Fo, what is unclear to me is why am I now getting almost 100% success with my right thumb (although having to place it with great precision) and 0% with my left thumb and index fingers, all of which were scanned per your instructions. Maybe I did not effectively scan my other fingers as I did the right thumb,

[snip]

It's too awkard for me using my left hand. My guess is you either registered too far towards the tip or during registration, may have moved too far from the last spot scanned.

CelesteL106 wrote:

This was very helpful. I am trying it out and hoping it works. Do you think it is a hardware or software issue?

Hope it works out okay for you. I know it can be more than frustrating. At least for me it was 🙂

George Guerrero wrote:

FWIW, I am of the opinion that it is a software issue, at least the one that impacts me specifically.

I get ~90% success rate. When it fails, it does so NOT with a "try again" but as if it doesn't sense the registered finger and eventually moves to "slide to unlock". HOWEVER, if I put a non-registered finger, it correctly provides the "try again" message. So clearly the hardware is sensing something.

It rejects incorrect prints from a non-registered finger, but struggles to fully accept a registered finger 10% of the time. It's as if there is a third option – accept, reject AND "not really sure".

When in the "not really sure" state, it never eventually accepts, but 100% of the time I can get it to work normally when invoking control center and opening and closing calculator.

Incidentally, and I didn't have the phone long enough to say for sure, I started to have issus after the update that added the slight pause before the "slide to unlock" message appeared. Originally, it appeared immediately. Certainly not diagnosing anything by saying so... just curious if anyone noticed the same thing.

Hi George,

Couple of points:

There are several issues, the most easily fixed is "proper" registration and uage. While it does not affect everyone, indicated by reports some have no problems with TID, for those of us that do, it can be overcome provided the H/W isn't defective. This, IMHO, is unrelated to the S/W problems.

The issue you point out is S/W related, and good catch on the "try again" with a non-registered finger. I never tried that until just now, and I see the same thing. The trick I posted earlier in this thread with the Control Panel however does work however. It appears to "fix" a brain dead TID. I'm seeing it on 7.0.4 too.

I never saw it prior to 7.0.3 which introduced the delayed prompt, but then again, I never had any unlock problems from the launch once I changed how I registered a finger. I started having issues when running about 35 apps in the background trying to break the phone to see what others were seeing. I now get the springboard crashes and the brain dead TID issues with Twitter the last active app and a locked screen. That will teach me 🙂

There is another thread on ths issue, and there's a registered developer there who reported it to Apple. Hopefully to be fixed soon...

paulfromhere wrote:

George Guerrero wrote:

Goto Settings>Control Center and hit the toggle for Access on Lock Screen

[snip]

I used to be able to do it on 7.0.3, but seem to have lost the control center on the password screen on 7.0.4. I thought it was a bug fix.

It still works for me on 7.0.4

Joe_Fo wrote:

I never saw it prior to 7.0.3 which introduced the delayed prompt, but then again, I never had any unlock problems from the launch once I changed how I registered a finger. I started having issues when running about 35 apps in the background trying to break the phone to see what others were seeing. I now get the springboard crashes and the brain dead TID issues with Twitter the last active app and a locked screen. That will teach me 🙂

There is another thread on ths issue, and there's a registered developer there who reported it to Apple. Hopefully to be fixed soon...

Hi Joe,

Thanks for your reply. Had not read about the Twitter-specific cause/effect until your note. I just gave it a try and sure enough... brain dead TID. For the benefit of others, just to be clear, I had Twitter open and allowed the iPhone to self-lock after the user-selected 1 minute interval. Simply sleeping the phone using the top button and Twitter as last app does not result in TID purgatory.

Will report back if any other specific use case results in a TID failure. FWIW, I do appreciate your efforts to help debug despite not seeing the issue initially. I'm sure I am not alone in that sentiment. 🙂

I've had my iphone 5s for about a month now. My sensor has worked flawlessly until a week ago where it would work 1/5 times for a few hours. Things went back to normal after that but I just wanted to mention to you guys who are having problems I registered the same finger twice and find that it increases my recognizability accuracy a good bit I would say my sensor works 9/10 times. Give it a shot and let me know!

BlazeApple wrote:

but I just wanted to mention to you guys who are having problems I registered the same finger twice and find that it increases my recognizability accuracy a good bit I would say my sensor works 9/10 times. Give it a shot and let me know!

On my phones they stop working completely within a day, so having extra scans does no good .. still have to just replace them every day.

paulfromhere wrote:

BlazeApple wrote:

but I just wanted to mention to you guys who are having problems I registered the same finger twice and find that it increases my recognizability accuracy a good bit I would say my sensor works 9/10 times. Give it a shot and let me know!

On my phones they stop working completely within a day, so having extra scans does no good .. still have to just replace them every day.

I tried scanning the same finger twice and that ultimately failed just like a single scan when I was going through my series of TID failures. Unless you scan your finger(s) per Joe_Fo's method, TID will not work properly (unless there is some other software or hardware related issue).

I have this problem also but it seems like it's only with the extended passcode if I set it to simple it will work again

rogerfromparma wrote:

I have this problem also but it seems like it's only with the extended passcode if I set it to simple it will work again

Simple (4 digit) or not makes no difference here. Is that what you're referring to?

Yes, I took it back to Apple this morning and they exchanged it. We'll see what happens

Dreanmachine1 wrote:

[snip]

As far as the wife's unit, she has about a 75 percent success rate. Usually, she misses once (at most twice) and then she is in.

[snip]

Again, something in her DNA, possibly. I don't see any hardware issues playing culprit in our units.

Good to hear it's still going well!

I'm changing my mulyi-step, way too verbose HOWTO, and will add it to my thread, or perhaps start a new one and link to both threads.

Take a close look at her finger(s) and what part she used to register. Looking at fingerprint pics on Google might be a clue as to why some have better results than others. I'm convinced the system need enough unique data to model well.

Looking at mine, there's very little variation at the top of the arches, and I believe that's the reason for my initial failures using the tip, even though I did so flat.

I think I've come up with a good analogy as to why the system gets worse for some people, and hopefully a good guide as to why one has to be methodical with registration, but haven't started writing it yet. Moot point as it really shouldn't be needed, but the question of "why does it get worse over time?" still crops up. Easy answer is GIGO.

Hey Joe,

Discovered another "brain dead" TID situation, though also involving Twitter. Previously, I found the bdTID occured only when iPhone is allowed to auto-lock with Twitter as open app, and not when put to sleep manually via the sleep/wake button with Twitter as open app.

However, the latter situation also results in bdTID if I receive a notification for an email via Mailbox (the third party app) and I do not engage TID before the screen goes back to sleep. If I do engage the notification immediately upon receipt, TID works normally. Interestingly, a notification from the stock Mail app, does not result in any problems.

So the net of this, as far as I can see, is the Twitter app is the primary part of the equation combined with the screen auto-sleeping under certain conditions.