"The iris sensor is not responding. Try again later"

[Gary02468]

Occasionally my S8+'s iris sensor stops working for a couple of minutes, then recovers. It happens both when unlocking the screen and in iris-sensing apps. Has anyone else had this happen?

 

[Gsxr151]

Yep I just reset the phones....powered off.

 

[Gary02468]

Yes it happened to me again and this time it didn't recover until I rebooted the phone (but then it worked immediately). Not sure if it's a hardware or software problem. Rebooting fix suggests software, although it's possible for a hardware failure to cause a problem that's fixed by some reinitialization that happens on restart.

I noticed that when the iris sensor reports not responding, the infrared scanner does not turn on (no red light).

Wondering if the phone is defective and should be exchanged, or if they all do this.

 

[lsmith9523]

My iris scan was acting up as well. I ended up removing my iris data and reentered as new. It helped but still having times where the scan stalls a bit before unlocking.

 

[Gary02468]

My iris scan was acting up as well. I ended up removing my iris data and reentered as new. It helped but still having times where the scan stalls a bit before unlocking.

That sounds like a different problem than the one this thread is about. Or by "acting up" did you mean getting the same not-responding message (rather than just not recognizing the irises)?

 

[mrc13]

I'm having the same issue. I'm pretty sure it happened to me both before and after the update. Really hope this is a software issue and not a defective phone.

 

[Jason Fournier1]

Yes exactly same problem with red light not working either. Might be a software or driver crash. Reboot fixed. Happened once so far.

 

[Jason Fournier1]

I'm having the same issue. I'm pretty sure it happened to me both before and after the update. Really hope this is a software issue and not a defective phone.

Mine occurred before update. I have been refusing the update everyday util DQA issue is fixed.

 

[Gary02468]

More info: a few days ago, the problem escalated. Instead of the sensor becoming unresponsive until reboot, it occasionally crashed the phone--that is, the phone would occasionally spontaneously reboot right when I tried to use the iris scanner.

So I exchanged the phone and the new one has been fine so far: no crashes and no problems with scanning irises (or fingerprints--some people have reported similar problems with that sensor). The phone has been up 54 hours now. Hoping the good luck continues.

My different experience with two instances of the S8+ increases the likelihood that it was a hardware problem, but that's still not certain. Even if it's a software bug (perhaps in the sensor drivers), it could be that slight hardware variations (all within design parameters) affect timing enough to trigger the software bug in some phones only.

 

[Gary02468]

Update: after working beautifully for six days, my new S8+ also got the iris-scanner-unresponsive error and had to be rebooted in order to restore the scanner. We'll see how often this problem occurs with the new phone.

 

[Gary02468]

Sadly, the recent AQDE update (on AT&T) has not fixed the problem. I still get the "iris sensor not responding" message about once a day. When it happens, the iris sensor does not work again until I restart the phone, at which point it's immediately functional again, for another day or so.

Still no workaround found, other than rebooting.