Not to gripe about an obvious issue, but I’m as equally unimpressed with the thumbprint scanner on the new Apple iPhone 5s as I am impressed.

I’m impressed when it works. I think “Wow! That is cool.”

However, the scanner seems to only work about 50% of the time for me.

I’ve added my thumbprint numerous times in the settings. And at first, it works great. After some time, though, it starts to degrade.

I think there’s two problems, though. First, I live in a cold climate and my hands get very dry in the winter time. If I look at my finger tips, the skin is dry and flakey. I think this starts to confuse the scanner (not surprisingly).

Second, I think if any kind of oily residue starts to build up on the scanner, it will stop working. I still need to test this, but right now, my fingers are too dry to do so.

Anyway, cool idea. Very useful. It would be nice if it were more reliable, though. Maybe Apple needs more beta testers in the Minnesota, though. 🙂