The idea behind HID is wonderful. However, to really be useful it needs to “just work.” HID, well, doesn’t. I can think of exactly one time it unlocked a door the first time I held my phone up to a reader. Beyond that, I find myself consistently standing at the door, failing to unlock it with the phone three or four times, and reaching into my bag for my card—which works like the phone should. For as inconsistent and unreliable as the phone seems to be, the watch app and lock screen widget are worse.
To be fair, the phone app does seem to be more reliable when open and running but allegedly that shouldn’t be a requirement.
We installed new card readers in part to support unlocking through smartphones, and have a waiting list of users asking to have their devices enrolled for this function. I’m “lucky” enough to be one of our testers but, as the IT leader who is sure to have the flakiness of this system pinned on their group, don’t think I’ll be rolling it out to our users any time soon.