With the traditional username/password system, you have to remember a unique, secure password for each site--or else you use a password manager, which involves more steps as well. He's also mentioned that this could be adapted into a browser plugin, so that would streamline use on a trusted machine.

As for losing the phone, he suggests a passphrase-like "local password" on "The user's view of the application" page [1].

[1] https://www.grc.com/sqrl/userview.htm