Believe it or not it's actually nineteen times, not nine. Though the last ten introduce a fair amount of inconvenience and eww-factor when unlocking your phone.
I don't know about Apple phones, but I had luck getting my phone to unlock by using my chin. It wasn't really reliable (stopped working after a few hours, probably because of the beard growing), but I'm sure we can figure something out.
It's not too difficult to get access to the full 50000-odd combinations (see https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204587 for where that number comes from) Apple hardware can identify with a little work.
