Dropped your phone, and Face ID stopped working. The screen is intact, the phone turns on, but your face is no longer recognized. Sound familiar? People bring devices like this to us regularly, and the scenario is almost always the same: dropped it, picked it up, everything seems fine — and then they notice face unlock isn't working.

Why Face ID is So Sensitive to Impacts

Face ID isn't just a camera. It's a whole module: an infrared camera, a proximity sensor, a dot projector, and a flood illuminator. All of this is packed into the small notch at the top of the screen — the Dynamic Island on newer models or the classic notch on older ones. Upon impact, any of these components can shift or get damaged, even if the phone looks completely fine on the outside.

Most often, the dot projector suffers — a tiny part that creates an invisible grid of 30,000 dots on your face. It's by using this grid that the iPhone understands it's really you. If the dot projector fails or simply shifts out of alignment, Face ID stops working completely. Everything else keeps working as normal.

What Usually Breaks

Based on our practice, the causes fall into several categories.

  • Damage to the Face ID flex cable — the flexible cable connecting the module to the board can tear or disconnect from the connector upon impact.
  • Displacement or destruction of the dot projector — mechanical damage from an impact, especially if the phone dropped corner-first right on the notch side.
  • Damage to the infrared camera — less common, but happens too, especially on the iPhone 12 and 13 after side impacts.
  • A loose connector on the motherboard — sometimes the module itself is intact, but the connection to the board has been disrupted.

Here's a case: an iPhone 13 Pro was brought in, dropped on asphalt from about a meter high. The screen didn't break — tempered glass saved it. But Face ID didn't work at all. We opened it up — the dot projector had shifted literally half a millimeter from its seating. After carefully repositioning it, everything worked. That's why you shouldn't panic right away and think replacement is inevitable.

What You Can Try Yourself

There aren't many options, and none involve opening up the phone at home. But there are a few things worth checking before heading to a service center.

  1. Restart your phone. Simple, but sometimes after a drop, the system just freezes and stops seeing the module. A regular restart fixes this.
  2. Check if there's any dirt or dust in the camera notch. After a drop, small debris sometimes gets in there and blocks the sensors.
  3. Go to Settings → Face ID & Passcode, reset Face ID, and set it up again. If the module works but the settings just glitched out, this will help.
  4. Update iOS if you haven't done so in a while. Rarely, but it happens that after a restart, the system is waiting for an update to correctly initialize the module.

Another real-world example: an iPhone 14 was brought in where Face ID stopped working after a drop in a car — the phone flew off its mount. We asked the client to simply restart and re-create Face ID first. It helped. Apparently, the proximity sensor temporarily lost contact, and the restart restored initialization. So don't rush to take it in for repairs right away.

When You Definitely Need a Pro

If a restart and re-creating Face ID didn't help, there's nothing left you can do on your own. Face ID is strictly tied to the motherboard of a specific phone. This is done on purpose: you can't just take and replace the module with a new one — the iPhone won't accept someone else's scanner. Re-pairing is only done using special equipment, and that's a job for a service center.

Important point: don't take such a phone just anywhere. An unqualified technician can damage the flex cable during disassembly, and then the problem turns from "the sensor shifted" into "components need replacement." Face ID repair is delicate work. Depending on the model, the price ranges from 2,500 to 6,000 rubles, and turnaround time is usually same-day.

If none of the above helped — come to iClub at 35 Kommunisticheskaya St. Diagnostics are free, the technician will take a look and immediately tell you what exactly happened and how much it will cost.