Q: Touch ID being Erratic

D'Oh! I missed "Edit" in the corner of the screen...   Thanks much for the additional info. I better stick my nose into the 5S manual I downloaded yesterday...

BTW, my wife reports much better results since she switched to fingers with clearer prints.

FWIW, I don't understand some of the angst expressed in this thread over Touch ID glitches. I consider the technology to be nascent even though it has been in development for years; it's apparently harder than we think to develop a reliable biometric device.

Frankly, I consider Apple's use of Touch ID in the 5S as being one step above a marketing gimmick. I'm amazed that it works as well as it does. Apple was smart to make it easy to bypass Touch ID and use the "old fashion" passcode.  I expect that Touch ID will improve over time as Apple updates the software. If Touch ID remains problematic I'll simply switch back to the passcode method if I can't live with Touch ID idiosyncrasies.

If you purchased an iPhone 5S only because of Touch ID... well, I wouldn't upgrade for that feature alone. The 5S is a significant update of my iPhone 4S so I had a number of very good reasons to upgrade. (Not to mention that I can sell my unlocked iPhone and cover the cost of the upgrade. If I waited longer the resell value of my old iPhone would be significantly less than it is now.)

Well, I'm stumped now.  I just lost all recognition of my prints after over a month without much problem.  I've closed out all apps, rebooted, turned Touch ID on and off, but nothing works now.  And I'm not talking about a slow degradation. It was working fine and then suddenly there was absolutely zero recognition of any of the four prints I've had registered for over a month.  Defintely not technique this time, or anything else I can figure. Anybody else see this sudden total failure?

mrsnork wrote:

 

Well, I'm stumped now.  I just lost all recognition of my prints after over a month without much problem. 

 

[snip]

Ouch. Not good. Dropped maybe?

What about the registration screen; Are your prints recognized there?

Joe_Fo wrote:

Ouch. Not good. Dropped maybe?

 

What about the registration screen; Are your prints recognized there?

Nope, nothing physical.  And it wasn't working on registration screen, lock screen or anywhere.  But....

Thirty minutes or so later and it was back to normal.  Didn't do anything to it in between. No issues apparent from the diagnostic log.  The only thing I did today that I had not done before was make and receive a FaceTime Audio call (which is pretty awesome, actually...terrific sound quality), but I don't see that there would be any correlation. I am completely perplexed.

I'm having the same issues. The finger I use the most (my right thumb) stopped working first ,and then it slowly stopped recognizing the others, so I deleted all of my finger  prints and it was saying "finger print cannot be recognize try a different finger" so I restarted my phone and it's not working on any of my fingers! It is just frustrating :(

Hello,

My iPhone 5s started acting wierdly concerning the touch ID responsiveness.

It became so sensitive to dirt, so I have to wipe the button everytime for it to work properly and though I don't find it really dirty.

That is just not practical!

I wonder why Apple didn't take that in consideration while designing this feature.

Is it normal? Or is there something wrong?

Thanks.

Welcome to the club. It blows.  My replacement (new in box phone) will be here tomorrow. I'll report back. 

I wonder why so little is said about the sensor becoming dirty too quickly. It's definitely the cause of the issues for me. It's not software, because in 100% of the cases when my finger stops being recognized, I wipe the sensor (and the finger!) clean and it starts working perfectly again, I can again put the finger at any angle, the edge of the finger works too, etc.

I am not sure if my fingers are always that filthy/sweaty or why I would have this problem why others won't. I started monitoring my behaviour with how I hold the phone, etc and noticed that I usualy pull the phone from my pocket by holding the home button (the phone is upside down in my pocket usually, because the headphones jack is at the bottom), pulling the phone up and then with a quick hand movement turning the phone around so that I hold it at the bottom now. While I am doing all of this, I am essentially holding the sensor. Maybe that's the reason?

I am also not using any case for the phone. Could this be another reason why some people have more problems than others?

Well, after it was working 100% again last night, I tried making another FaceTime audio call this morning. Within about 10 minutes afterwards Touch ID is completely failing. No print recognition whatsoever.  Reboots don't seem to help. If it's anything like last night I'll check again in 30 minutes and see if it comes back.

Anybody else notice this behavior? This couldn't be anything but a software issue, could it?

The only cleaning my home button get is, well, none. Loaded with fingerprints, and sometimes get smeared if I slide a finger across it, and I never have the problems you speak of.  Maybe if I worked paving roads, or in a coal mine, I could see a problem, but no, it works fine,

mrsnork wrote:

 

Well, after it was working 100% again last night, I tried making another FaceTime audio call this

[snip]

Anybody else notice this behavior? This couldn't be anything but a software issue, could it?

Tried both facetime video last night, and audio only just now to/from an ipad air.  Still working fine afterwards.  Clueless.  Still have over 20 apps open and daily low memory logs.

Apple does have a profile they can send you that, once installed, generates detailed info on TID. Perhaps that can help pinpoint the problem. Worth a shot...

Yeah, could be coincidence, I don't know. I still have total failure right now. I'll report when and if it comes back.

I have the same issue and Apple has already replaced the phone once. The new phone does the same thing. When first programmed, touch ID works perfectly, within a day it starts having trouble recognizing the fingers and then eventually forgets them completely. I do not think this is a hardware problem. This seems like buggy software to me. I've been to Apple a few times on this and both of my phones as well as others that were in at the same time showed lost of crashing in the diagnostics. I'm just about ready to return the 5S. I bought it for touch ID and it does not work reliably, which is too bad because when it does work, it's great.

I think my touch id worked for about a day before I started having problems with it.... have restarted, reset, done everything i can to the phone and no luck!!

took a usuers advice on here to delete fingerprints and redo them.... deleted, and now my phone can not even read my fngerprints to create an id for them LOL! So annoyed! Will not work at all now! finding it funny that i am apparently 'unreadble' to Apple now........

Any more advice guys??

Just following up...took about an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes this time, but full functionality is again restored. Again, I didn't delete and re-enroll the prints or do anything in partcilaulr to resovle it.  it just came back. 

I've got some weird software glitch going on here. No clue what it is.  I suspect those like JessikaM who are unable to even enroll the prints may be experiencing the same thing.  Touch ID just completely fails for some period of time so you can't do anything with it.  JessikaM, you ought to try it again in an hour or two and see if it will let you enroll the prints then.  Failing that, you could try restoring the phone in iTunes and setting it up as a new device, but you may lose some data like text messages, etc.  Make sure you back up the phone first so you can revert back if you need to.

Unfortunately, I think we're all going to have to wait for Apple to update iOS 7 again to totally resolve this (hopefully).