The iPhone X was recently released, and it comes with loads of new changes. While there were tons of changes in iOS and under the hood, the biggest change was the omission of the Home button. The Home button, which was home to the fingerprint scanner (pun intended), was removed from the device. In its place, Apple introduced a supposedly better and more secure biometric security system – Face ID. Unlike the Face Unlock feature present on Android devices and the Iris Scanner present on the Galaxy S8/S8+ or Note 8, the Face ID relies on a different technology altogether. It uses a dot projector to place over 30,000 invisible dots on your face, and a flood illuminator to cast infrared light and an infrared camera to read all that information. The entire data is then collected and processed to create an accurate 3D map of your face.
Now while all this sounds great, Apple has gone to great extents to improve the privacy features even more. As such, there are certain cases where your Face ID might disable itself in order to ensure your privacy. Earlier, on previous iPhones, you could simply press the power button 5 times to turn off the Touch ID. With the iPhone X, the Face ID will disable itself:
- If you enter the emergency screen or attempt to turn off the device
- If you reboot your device
- If you haven’t unlocked your iPhone X using Face ID in over 48 hours
- If there are 2 failed attempts to unlock using the Face ID
- If you haven’t unlocked the phone with a Passcode/Pin/Password at all in six and a half days
As such, in order to re-enable the Face ID, simply unlock your device using your Pin or Password, then re-lock your device, and again attempt to unlock it using Face ID. Additionally, if you don’t really buy into the hype around Face ID, you can disable Face ID entirely by going to Settings->Face ID and Passcode.
