Q: Touch ID being Erratic

Googling on the fingerprint sensor because it is frustrating as **** for me.  I program a finger, it works OK for 2-3 days, then degrades from there.  Reprogram the finger and the cycle begins again.

Feeling like I did not get what I paid for.

Have you read through my thread? Might find it works as designed, unless the phone

is broken, which I doubt.

I had not, but reading through it, that is how I have been doing it.  Not the tip, but the more 'meaty' part of the finger.  Still tapers off to no recognition after a few days.

I did and followed your suggestions. Still have a problem.

Bummer. Could be defective. Try this:

Go into the fingerprint registration screen, and repeatedly touch the home button

as if training or unlocking. As a registered finger is recognized, the entry for

that finger will briefly low-light. It's a sanity check I guess. If a finger is being scanned

in the same position as it was registered, and assuming the finger is stationary

(Very Important) and the entry is not flashing, there may very well be a problem

with the sensor.  BTW, I don't know for sure, but my gut feeking tells me

this action help in the system learning and getting better over time, FWIW.

I think on days I have too much coffee I find I have to try 2-3 times to unlock.

Either that, or I forget to position correctly, look at where I hit the home

button, reposition and it it's fine.

Also, if you position your finger to unlock without depressing home, but rather

hit the sleep/wake button without moving the finger on the home button,

it should unlock fine.  It was tough at first to realize I was moving my finger,

ever so slightly, while trying to unlock. Given just having depressed the home

button, I guess it's to be expected.

HTH.

I can occasionally get 1 finger to work. What I do not understand is why does it get progressively more sensitive after registering a fingerprint? I mean, after scanning my fingers, the phone will open each and every time immediately thereafter. However, wait awhile and it does not open immediately and to get it to successfully open, you have to place your finger in a precise manner on the scanner, otherwise it fails to open.

Makes no sense to me.

I posted the following about a week ago.  I'm more convinced now that this is what is happening to some of us- criteria for match is being tightened over time.

One of the Apple sites states that TouchID is supposed to improve with usage.  Whether that means the fingerprint criteria is tightened or loosened (based on various positional readings), this seems to imply this is not a static operation from the initial read.  So here's a possible theory (swag)- suppose this is either corrupting the fingerprint scan data or tightening it beyond usability?   Just a thought, based on the symptoms that I see as well as quite a few others.

Here's the quote from this site: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5949

Touch ID will incrementally add new sections of your fingerprint to your enrolled fingerprint data to improve matching accuracy over time. Touch ID uses all of this to provide an accurate match and a very high level of security.

smilleresq wrote:

 

I can occasionally get 1 finger to work. What I do not understand is why does it get progressively more sensitive after registering a fingerprint? I mean, after scanning my fingers, the phone will open each and every time immediately thereafter. However, wait awhile and it does not open immediately and to get it to successfully open, you have to place your finger in a precise manner on the scanner, otherwise it fails to open.

 

Makes no sense to me.

Start over. Blow existing prints away by turning passcode off then back on,

selecting "Delete" to delete "Saved Fingerprints".

Register 1 or 2 fingers only to start. When training, rotate finger through

25 to 30 degree arc total, rotating about 5 degrees between scans. Also

move finger slightly towards and away from tip, making sure NOT to get

closer to the tip as I showed earlier in ths thread.

Bottom line: Exposing more of a finger during the initial registration

will result in better results. At least that's what I found true over

the first 2 weeks I struggled with the phone.

This has worked very reliably for me at least.

-Joe

I followed your directions, originally the other day and over a short period of time the capacity to recognize prints degrades. Giving it a shot again it works perfectly, opening the phone with ease. Lets see what happens later...

Joe_Fo's instructions for registering the prints resulted in almost perfect results for me for over a month now on four different fingers (both left and right thumbs and index fingers).  It seems that you must get the center "swirl" part of your fingerprint registered properly for Touch ID to consistently work.  I do suspect bohicaIL's theory is correct, and so over time the prints will no longer be recognized if you did not initially register them correctly. 

And thank you Timmerton.  It appears you had the same experience I did.  I think the low memory situations are the biggest culprit.  I've found that you don't necessarily need to delete crashing apps, but turning off background refresh for certain apps and closing a few of the memory-hungry apps out through the multitasking view occasionally (double click home button, and swipe up on the window to close it) will keep Touch ID (and everything else) working smoothly.  Those that don't think  apps have any impact on the operating system or hardware have obviously never heard of viruses.  Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying that's what this is, I'm just making an analogy.

My experience with Touch ID leads me to conclude that, for me anyway, it was a combination of software issues and not registering the prints correctly.  It is interesting to me that Apple didn't make this a bit more fool-proof.  Their instructions on how to register the prints do not even indicate that you need to use the center of your finger.  Maybe this is still affecting only a small minority of iPhone 5S owners, but I've seen this thread grow more every day.  It's beyond an isolated issue now.

Joe_Fo wrote:

 

Register 1 or 2 fingers only to start. When training, rotate finger through

25 to 30 degree arc total, rotating about 5 degrees between scans. Also

move finger slightly towards and away from tip, making sure NOT to get

closer to the tip as I showed earlier in ths thread.

I'm confused about the rotation, because earlier, you seemed to suggest that it was not a good idea.

So those above explanations, and solution options might be useful for some. But my problem isn't not recognizing the finger print, my problem is that my sensor sometimes doesn't realize my finger is there. It doesn't even say try again. Just nothing. But it turns normal if I unlocked the phone with my passcode or tryining to power it off and cancel. If it knows my finger is on it, recognizing the finger print isn't an issue.

ylmzonr, that sounds like a hardware isssue.  When I was having an issue I would at least get the "try again" message.  In fact, when I try mine with a finger I know isn't registerd it displays the "try again" message. 

odysseus wrote:

 

  [snip]

 

I'm confused about the rotation, because earlier, you seemed to suggest that it was not a good idea.

Not sure which part of the post you refer to?  By rotate, I mean leaving a finger flat on

the home buttom while training, but with each training scan moving (rotating) clockwise

or counter clockwise a few degrees (5 maybe) between scans.  I estinate I "rotated" from

a 5 o'clock starting point, to a 7 o'clock position, or there abouts, also moving slightly

a partial length of the finger.

Maybe this describes it better?  Some day when I get time and energy a YouTube post

might help...

I remember someone, maybe in this thread, stating they were told to "roll"

(best word to describe it I think) their finger during training, as seen in cop shows the way

real ink based fingerprint on paper is taken.  A bad idea IMHO as the scanner, from

what I can tell, does not do well with movement when trying to unlock, so why would it

be expecting that rolling motion during training...

At first, I thought that this is a hardware issue, but if this is a hardware issue, why would it start working immediately after i unlocked with my passcode and locked the phone again? that's why I think this must be a software issue, I'm not a software expert though. Btw, I bought it from Apple Online store, if I go to an Apple retail store would they replace it? or do I have to send it back to somewhere else? fyi it's been more than 30 days since I bought it.