Touch ID being Erratic

Apple alludes to this in their support documentation:

"Moisture, lotions, sweat, oils, cuts, or dry skin may affect fingerprint recognition. Certain activities can also temporarily affect fingerprint recognition, including exercising, showering, swimming, cooking, or other conditions or changes that affect your fingerprint."

I would also add, though it may be controversial, that the amount of static electricity one experiences may also effect the sensitive TID sensor. I believe that dry skin, chemistry, climate, clothing, and surroundings can create a "perfect storm" for some people with TID. I have speculated much about this on this forum in the past but I have had a number of reported successes with my setup process as well.

Although your explanation sounds reasonable. I'll tell this one

Last time....

What you are saying is that with my first 5s my fingers conditions stayed perfect

For 3 weeks! (I think I remembered showering eating and actually

Exactly same routine as now)

So in those 3 weeks somehow after shower or eating or sweating or ....

The sensor worked perfect.. And after 3 weeks suddenly it doesn't..

Please, explain this to me? Condition of sensor neither condition of finger

Is the reason here guys face it! Ok with a perfect working sensor it MIGHT

sometimes fail ONCE but never in a way the people here are

Suffering with.. Want to bet my left testicle on this it's either a software (mostly likely)

Or a hardware (less likely as it degrades over time) problem.

Nothing to do with static wet fingers protectors cases and so on..

Now that i use the sensor for unlocking apps seperatly and it is linked to my keychain

So can use it for every password anywhere it's more clear how it works and

Specially when it doesn't work.. Respring device or closing all apps sometimes works

But sometimes it's just waiting till it magically starts working again..

My guess is still the chip that gets confused/full/or name it what u want

A couple of things not meant to discount your experience:

1. My statement isn't to say that it is strictly a hardware or user issue... To the contrary, it is to say minor variations in the "images" that the sensor captures can cause failure over time, due to the corrective mechanism built into TID software.

2. Though we may be able to say with some confidence that our routine has not changed... That doesn't necessarily give us a full picture of our daily environment. For example, in Idaho it can go from over 80 degrees to less than 40 degrees within a 3 week period, while sometimes seeing single digit humidity. These kinds of changes can not only dry your skin out but increase the prevalence of static electricity.

With all of that said, I am not suggesting that my method is the solution for you, but it certainly is easy to discount if you haven't tried it.

Personally I can't see how it is anything but the fact the phone itself doesn't work. I've tried wiping my fingers, making sure they are clean, wiping the touch pad etc but once it starts to not work nothing improves it. If it were localised dirt, sweat etc surely later or the next day conditions would change and it would work again, but they don't, once they fail, they continue to fail.

Update on my situ. Having received my fifth iphone 5s yesterday at around 13.00, I set it up and it worked perfectly - I locked and unlocked the phone 30 times using my thumb in varied positions on the pad and it worked every time. Here we are at 09.00 the next day, less than 24 hours later, and its now failing most of the time, which is hugely depressing.

I'm not a phone enthusiast - I just want a device that works as it should, and in my view the iphone 5s is poor and, as I stated in an earlier post, really shouldn't be sold as it doesn't work properly.

If the problem were the hardware, how could SIX PHONES fail for you and three fail for me? It's the software. They will fix it. iOS7 is buggy as all getout, and crashes on me frequentlyu, which is doubtless why they're taking their sweet time on 7.1

I respect that not everybody is a phone enthusiast and is willing to expend a lot of extra effort like I am. While, as a developer, I am fairly confident that Apple will resolve the issues with TID in its next iOS 7.1 update, my method offers a potential solution for those who are willing to spend the extra time to try it. (Almost everybody, out of the handful of people who have said they tried it, has had success.)

You know, I have become far too obsessed about this TID issue. So I have done something that seems to work for me while I wait for Apple to fix this problem. I read somewhere on this discussion about the TID being erratic that some people have had some success by enrolling one finger mulitiple times. So I began by registering my right thumb three times in the same session. I didn't delete the first one as I did the second or the first or second when I did the third so I had three fingerprints enrolled (all of my thumb). The next day I was still able to get in so I went to the settings and checked to see which ones were still working. The second and third were still darkening when I put my thumb on the TID button but the first wasn't. So I deleted the failing 1st print and enrolled another one of my thumb. Today I was still able to get in so checked in settings again and again the first print (second one erolled in first session) was not working so I enrolled another print. What I hope will happen is that the TID will continue to perform as there are two (or perhaps three at times) prints that are still scanning successfully. To make sure there is always one scanning do a new scan every day......it only takes a couple of minutes and far less time than fooling around trying to get the TID to work every day. If anyone else tries this and is successful please let me know. Of course I hope this is only a stop gap method and that Apple will fix this problem sooner rather than later.

I would love to try Griswaldo4g's method but I have a Mophie Juice case and it is in two pieces. I can get the bottom off but the top is a tight fit which I don't want to fool with in case I damage something. Also, I have a Zagg screen protector which cost me $20. It is the 2nd one I have purchased as when I turned my first phone back into Apple it went with the phone as it is not likely you will get a good adhesion the 2nd time around. So screen protectors have already cost me $40 and I'm not game to put out any more. I will watch to see if others have his success tho.

Well guys here's the scoop. I just finished a lengthy online chat with an Apple rep. I brought up all the issues I had had with the TID and some you have experienced. I said I'd returned my phone and was on my second non-working phone and some of you have had more than that that didn't work. They told me we must be a very small percentage of their customers as they haven't even heard of any widespread issue with the TID and that there is no magic fix anticipated either with the hardware or software. Instead they wanted to deal with these issues one phone at a time. They want me to take my phone to an Apple store (over 2 hrs. away so I said no thanks) to see if they could check out the TID scanner. Since I don't want to travel that far I'm to check out my cellular service provider and see if they can diagnose whether the scanner is working properly. Another suggestion was that maybe it is in something I have in Settings wrong, but they can't tell me what it might be. I have a Zagg screen protector which has a hole cut out for the sensor and a Mophie Juice case, both of which they feel are not causing the problem. A case such as a Lifeproof case which is waterproof and covers everything is not recommended I guess as they questioned me about my screen protector and case and wanted to be assured that there was a cutout on it for the TID. So, I guess we just have to brain storm what could be wrong with our phones. It certainly is funny that more than one phone will have the same problem even changed out for a new one yet there are others out there (a larger percentage than us I guess) are having no problems. Back to the drawing board, so to speak, I guess.

To be honest I don't believe that. If you look on the internet there's loads of chatter about this issue. Indeed one journalistic reference I found (US I think) said they estimated perhaps 25% of the 5s phones had this problem - although how accurate that estimate is I have no way of knowing - only Apple will. Whenever I've spoke to Apple people they deny all knowledge, but I find this hard to believe.

As stated before, I'm on my fifth example now, and can report that 48 hours after receiving it and setting it up the finger recognition no longer works at all. By the way, I don't have it in any sort of cover so there's nothing interupting the scan, I keep it in a leather Mulberry pocket from which I slide the phone to use.

Something just pops to mind.. If most people (if not all) get the

Same problem after changing it to new one yet so many don't have any problems..

Must be that the restore from iTunes or iCloud puts something back

That messes things up?

I had similar problem once, iTunes backup + iCloud one had a problem that

Didn't allow me to delete individual calls that was introduced since ios6 I think,

Even after upgrading from 4s to 5 it worked with fresh install but once restored

From iCloud or iTunes .. Different phone.. Same problem,.

Did anybody try the phone for a couple of days without doing ANY restore once so ever?

The problem might be inside your backup.. So no Mather how many phones

U replace it will always come back.. Not sure if anybody already tried this,.

I would try it but go my precious jailbreak and many tweaks already now

So will be an extra pain in the *** to redo all this :(

Got a feeling this might be it.. Even from corrupted backups from ages ago

Could be something that just doesn't go along with TID..

If somebody feels like trying this would be much appreciated.. U can always get your contact back

Trough some apps so u don't need to restore from iTunes or iCloud, make sure u don't

Turn on iCloud just yet till it's confirmed this is or isn't the cause..

This is one of the things I have been trying. I have my right thumb registered on (2) separate entries and a 3rd entry of a hybrid righ/left thumb combination. So far failures have been greatly reduced. I used to have 100% failure after a hand washing but now it's very reliable after hand washing. I keep my hands/fingers clean but after a hand washing the skin oils are completely removed. To be honest my hands a dry and cracked through the winter season and I am hoping that it get's better as the humidity comes up.

As I read more about this, I think they just made the memory/buffer for primary/initial scans too small and they end up getting truncated/thrown away as the new scans go through their learning/add process. Granted, they may be able to tweak the coding/algorithm to handle it better but I think we may be stuck with this 1st generation limited capability tech. Lots of us went through this same issue with the iPhone 4 Proximity Sensor with face dialing/hanging up/muting, etc. I went through (5) iPhone 4 before the (6th) worked perfectly. No kidding, the (6th) replacement phone worked like it should. I never replaced my 4s. It was great phone. My iPhone 5 was perfect as well, never replaced it. Someone would have called me crazy getting (5) phones replaced but it really took that many.

When 7.1 drops and things don't improve, I will get this early build 5s replaced too and see what happens. I always buy the largest capacity and AppleCare+ so that I don't have to live with these issues but like others have said, it's a real hassle to setup an appt and have to travel to an Apple Store to get replacement.

I just had a long chat with "Apple Chat" again tonight. Our weather was too bad today to travel and I wanted to bring up the ideas of covering the home button or corrupted backups that you guys have been tossing around as being a solution to our problem. They didn't seem too interested in the idea of covering the home button to either enroll our prints or to unlock our phones but perked up a bit at the idea we may have restored our phones from corrupted backups. My first 5S was restored using the backup with iTunes of my iPhone 4 and then of course the second 5S was restored from the first 5S. So we are working on first doing a backup of iCloud on my phone. Then I go to Settings, General, then erase all content and settings. Then I set up my phone as a New Phone.
We got through that and then it was time to plug into my computer into iTunes (a Mac laptop). But there the problem became too complex for them to get thru. I keep following their directions to get to a point that I could get into "recover" mode. It would have as message on my computer pop up telling me it couldn't get into my phone as it was locked and I had to use my passcode to open it (I had to put that in when setting up my TID for the "new phone"). I then looked at my phone and the passcode screen was on. Couldn't get it to go further. The message on my computer gave me choices of "more info", cancel or try again. I clicked on try again and then it said my phone wasn't connected (even tho it was!) So now I am awaiting a call back tomorrow at noon for the engineers to try and help me. Something is definitely wrong. I hope I can get to the bottom of it and if I do I'll post on here to let you know as it may be the "big" answer. BTW these advisors told me that Apple doesn't follow this discussion so are basically unaware of our problems. I told tonight's advisor that last night they told me they were not working on a fix for this in software, it is not a hardware problem and only a few have this problem. I told them I am in Canada, most of you are in the US and at least one of you was from UK so basically the problem is all over. They made notes. I'll get back to you with any further developments.

Very interesting Doggylover3

Is chat based in the US or does each country have its own chat? We need to bombard them if thats the case.

I have also had problems by upgrading from earlier Ios and OS X versions. I think installing as new must be the answer.

Let us know how you get on.

I think I am chatting with Apple in the US as the web address is Apple.com and if it is in Canada it is Apple.ca. With my first phone I phoned about, it definitely was the US and we discussed which country I was in. I don't advise anyone to wipe their phones until I find out why it is so much trouble getting my phone into recovery mode. I'll get back to this discussion.

I think it would definitely be more fruitful if a lot of us started chatting with their online support and say they are having problems. Our problem may then get them to take us more seriously.

djaysteven wrote:

Something just pops to mind.. If most people (if not all) get the

Same problem after changing it to new one yet so many don't have any problems..

Must be that the restore from iTunes or iCloud puts something back

That messes things up?

This is an extraordinarily long thread so I don't blame anybody for not reading every page of it, but this has been discussed. While restoring and setting up "as-new" can resolve many issues, it does not seem to make much difference with TID. I've run a completely new phone with a clean install (not from backup) and had the same issues. I've replaced the phone twice. The first time was due to the TID issues and was probably for no reason as it turns out. The second time I believe I actually did have a hardware issue with the sensor because even after a clean install the sensor didn't work. Nonetheless, assuming the hardware is good, the issues with print degradation over time seem to be software related.

The only thing that's worked for me is enrolling only one print in one slot using Joe_Fo's method. Putting any more than one print in makes TID go completely haywire (i.e. "try again" until you have to enter the passcode). I'll still gets finicky occasionally (though not so much that I have to use the passcode), but closing out open apps via the fast-app switcher and power cycling the phone helps. Also, when the area the scanner will recognize starts to "shrink" I'll go into the registration screen in settings and "expand" the area by touching the sensor so it highlights "Finger1" (or whatever you've named it). This process was detailed somewhere earlier in this thread.

Bottom line, I have little doubt it's a software issue. Hopefully iOS 7.1 will resolve it. It would be nice to be able to use more than one finger to unlock and not jump through all these hoops to keep TID working properly.