How do I get my phone to stop asking for a password?

[BeadKnit]

I have a Samsung Galaxy S9+ running Oreo. I made a huge mistake and decided to turn on iris recognition (my fingerprints are problematic and would never work), which forced me to create a password. The iris scans were mostly useless...in the same room where I created the scans, with the same lighting, the phone refused to recognize my irises, so I got rid of that pretty quickly.

The problem with the password is I'm petrified I'll accidentally touch the "emergency call" button. So I've been trying to disable the password before there's a problem.

But there's no way I can find to disable the password. Nothing I do, no search of this info on Google, turns up an answer, at least not one that works. The screens just loop endlessly back to using and saving...a password.

I don't want to factory reset the phone and lose all of my data, I just want to make it stop nagging me for a password.

So far, the only solution I've found is to set the "lock automatically" to the most possible time, 30 minutes. I can't set it longer than that. I tried changing the password to nothing, but it insists it must be four characters long and doesn't give the option to save nothing.

I'm perplexed at what the answer is. Do I really have to risk pressing the "emergency call" button and have to use a password for as long as I have this phone?

Thank you for your time.

 

[ashune]

There should be a "swipe" option in Settings > Lock screen and security > Screen lock type. Setting your screen lock type to swipe will only require you to swipe the screen to unlock it, which is the default behaviour if you don't set up a password or other type of screen lock. By the way, you don't really have to be that scared of accidentaly hitting the emergency call button. As far as I know, you also have to enter the emergency number (EU - 112, US - 911, UK - 999, etc.) to actually call it. I've been using a lock screen password for years on various devices and never accidentaly called emergency services.

 

[BeadKnit]

Thank you so much!

I did that and it works...so happy to know and have saved this info!

I thought I'd read somewhere, perhaps having to do with my provider, that the emergency number should already be programmed in the phone. So you can probably understand my hesitation! I do hope that's not the case, but you can likely see why I'm leery. I definitely don't want to test it, should it have been programmed in by the provider.

Thank you again!

 

[ashune]

Glad I was able to help. It is programmed, but hiting the emergency call button won't automatically trigger a call. It will open a keypad where you have to manually enter the number. Emergency phone numbers are programmed so that you can only call emergency numbers using that feature, and not any other phone number (e.g. entering 112 and taping the call button will trigger a call to emergency services, but entering another phone number, like 555-1234 and taping the call button will just show a message that you can only call emergency numbers using this feature). Anyways, this is the default behaviour on most (if not all) Android phones. I'm not aware of any Android phone that automatically starts an emergency call.

 

[Rukbat]

112 in, I believe, the entire EU - 911 in the US (and probably Canada).