Good point. I'm also slowly building confidence with the new gestures.
What I do find annoying though (aside from FaceID NOT working when I wear a face mask) is that after FaceID recognises me, I still have to swipe up to get to the Home Screen.
Especially when I am driving with the phone on a magsafe stand, I'd love it to stay open on the Home Screen as long as my face is there
You seriously wouldn’t want the iPhone going to the Home Screen just by it seeing your face, that would be a privacy and security problem as well as it happening when you didn’t want it to and you wouldn’t be able to read your notifications on the Lock Screen either, you have to have a confirmation of your intent to open the phone as it were.
As for someone who went from a 6s to a X four years ago, it took me no time at all to get used to the gestures and not miss the home button ever again. Sure we’ve had a small speed bump this last year or so with the masks, and FaceID isn’t perfect, but boy is it much nicer when you need it most of the time, plus having an Apple Watch I don’t need to use my pin to unlock my phone while wearing a mask as that will do it for me.
As for a few tips with the gestures, you may be aware now that anywhere right of the notch a swipe down will get you Control Centre. Swiping down anywhere left of that, that is under the notch to the very top left corner of the screen will get you Notification Centre.
Swipe up anywhere from the bottom of the screen and release gets you your home gesture, but if you pause after swiping up you get the app switcher, practice that a few times and it’s actually quicker than double pressing a home button.
A swipe down at the bottom edge of the screen gets you the reachability function that shifts the screen image down to be able to reach things with just your thumb, I don’t use that much but it’s there in a pinch.
For moving from tab to tab in Safari, just swipe the tab left or right. If you don’t like them at the bottom there is an option in Settings/Safari under Tabs, switch it from Tab Bar to Single Tab which moves it back to the top. My thumb still instinctively goes to the top of the screen still.
You also now have tap to wake so you can wake the screen by giving it a tap anywhere on it, and lastly remember when unlocking your phone you do not need to wait for the lock icon to animate that it’s unlocked before swiping up, you can swipe up from the bottom immediately when the screen is on and the phone will go to the Home Screen when it’s done confirming it’s you, so again, don’t wait, just swipe up straight away. I mention that as many when the iPhone X came out thought it was so much slower than TouchID for unlocking because they thought you had to wait till the lock icon had unlocked before swiping.
