It does have a biometric scanner. It's an IR-based 3D facial structure scanner. It's not camera-based facial recognition. It's directly comparable to how the fingerprint scanner works. It would just be difficult for us to support both for the planned 2-factor auth feature.
It's not really much more or less convenient. It's a bit different.
However, it's likely that we'll support 2-factor unlock with fingerprint scanners first unless it turns out that the code is easily reusable.
We want people to set a strong passphrase as the main unlock method.
So, to make that more usable without simply using fingerprint or face unlock as a secondary unlock mechanism, we plan to support 2-factor unlock where after using fingerprint / face unlock a shorter PIN / passphrase needs to be entered. It's difficult to implement it well though.
The primary unlock method is used to derive the per-profile encryption keys. The secondary unlock method still provides more than just UI-based security for a lock screen so it's more than a UI feature. The hardware keystore allows apps to make a key available only when unlocked.