Nah, swipe gestures are way better imo. Anecdotal, but there is a story that the design team (who were used to the previous button design) got so used to the swipes that they tried to do that constantly on their old phones as well.
I would have agreed with you on the fingerprints being superior, but I have to say that I really can’t say anything bad about the face scanner. It is fast and accurate and very rarely fails (which would be the same with fingerprints, you may have gloves on, or your hands are dirty, etc)
