>Passwords are personal data, faces and fingerprints are not, apparently.

The rulings you're referring to are based on the Fifth Amendment. They don't involve the privacy rights of the Fourth Amendment. Rather, they treat the act of revealing your password as testimonial: if you say "my password is hunter2", you are testifying; and the Fifth Amendment says you cannot be forced to testify against yourself; so you cannot be forced to reveal your password.

You can scan your fingerprint or face without speaking a word, so those acts are not testimonial, and forcing you to do them would not implicate the Fifth Amendment. Similarly, brute forcing your password, or searching for it written down in your notes, would not implicate the Fifth Amendment.

That’s like saying if my house is protected by a passcode lock, the cops can just break down my door and walk in. Sure, they can, but there are clear rules of when they can enter and search my property without my consent. So, sure, they can enter my phone, but that doesn’t mean they have the right to in the first place.

The comment you’re replying to specifically discusses Fifth Amendment rights. The police would not generally be violating those rights by entering your house without a warrant. That would be a Fourth Amendment issue.

(One might argue that breaking your door without due process of law would be a Fifth Amendment violation. I have no idea what existing precedent says about that.)

Five taps of power button on iPhone disables biometrics until you enter the passcode. I always do this before going through airport security

Android has something similar - in the power menu [1] there's a "Lockdown" button which will lock your phone, disable biometrics, and disable showing notifications until you unlock with password.

Depending on your version and flavour of Android you may need to enable this "Show Lockdown Option" in your settings.

[1] Opening this varies - my pixel is power + vol up, some phones are hold power, etc.

Just holding it down until it shows you the power off slider does the same. Easier to do in a panic.

For Face ID, just close your eyes.

There’s no delay. If it even sees you as you are closing your eyes, it unlocks. My son and I just tested this.

However, if you never actually look at the phone it will not unlock it. It requires your "attention" to unlock. I believe this is a togglable setting.

Then train it to recognize your face with your eyes closed, or winking, then keep both your eyes opened! ;)