How to remove Stolen Device Protection after your FaceID or Touch ID fails.

Stolen Device Protection was introduced to make it difficult for a thief who knows your iPhone Passcode to take over your phone, your account, and your data. It is set to make life more difficult away from your familiar places, and you can also override it to Always so that FaceID or TouchID (aka Biometrics) is needed wherever you are.

This becomes a problem if your biometrics fails, you cannot remove it and life becomes difficult for you! In a familiar place you can override the need for biometrics using Passcode, but that option is not available away from familiar places or when set to Always.

There is a way to get out of this mess. It requires to backup thrn restore your phone in Recovery Mode. This completely wipes the phone. This means that unless you have a backup, or you use cloud storage like iCloud Photos and iCloud Drive, then you will lose all your data. You should be able to make a backup if the phone is still accessible.

If you do have a recent backup then restore it during then iPhone setup from the Hello Screen below.

Neither Activation Lock nor eSIM are removed by Recovery mode

Go into Recovery mode to restore the phone, following the instructions in

If you can't update or restore your iPhone or iPod touch – Apple Support

When complete follow the onscreen instructions to set up your iPhone:

After the restore process has finished, the Hello screen should appear on your iPhone. Disconnect your phone from the computer and then  set up and use your iPhone.

During that process, if you have a backup you should choose to restore it, if not then set it up manually

When asked about setting up FaceID or TouchID now, tap set up later (it will not set up anyway if biometrics has failed)

You will be asked for your apple account and password, maybe credit card security codes, etc.

When restoration is finished, whether or not you restored a backup, the Stolen Device Protection will be turned off