iPhone 18 Pro stopped recognising its owner — and he froze halfway between "enter the password manually, like in the old days" and "what if this is forever"

iPhone 18 Pro stopped recognising its owner — and he froze halfway between "enter the password manually, like in the old days" and "what if this is forever". A familiar panic: usually by this point the person has already poked at the screen, wiped the front camera for some reason, and taken mild offence at the phone.

The good news: there is nothing to wipe. Apple has already released iOS 27.0.1, and that is the update that fixed the critical bug which made Face ID on the iPhone 18 Pro refuse to see the face. The problem is not you, not your appearance, and not the fact that you went to bed in an awkward position.

The procedure is as simple as a warm-up before a run. Step one — update to 27.0.1. Step two — go into the Face ID settings, reset the saved data and re-enrol your face on the phone. Step three — restart the iPhone. Often, after these three, a glance unlocks the phone again in half a turn.

If the update did not help and Face ID still pretends not to recognise you, then it is no longer about software. Most likely something has happened to the module or the front camera: knocks, drops and a close friendship with water are not things Face ID takes with enthusiasm. At that point there is nothing to twist by hand.

That is exactly the scenario our workshop exists for. Hardware diagnostics are best left to those who take these phones apart not from pictures on the internet: we will check both the camera and the module, and work out where the hold-up is hiding. In the meantime, practise entering your password — just in case. It might come in handy.