[Solved] Weird lock-screen issue

[Richy_T]

Solved (how can I add that to the title?)

Verizon Galaxy S5, rooted and running 4.4.4

I had a weird and unsettling incident today. I had my phone set up for pattern unlock. I pulled my phone from my pocket and it was on a pin unlock screen. I was unable to get it to go back to pattern unlock, even with pulling the battery. As so often happens when I'm ambushed with a password requirement (the old pattern unlock didn't require a pin), I couldn't remember it. I'm sure I'll remember it eventually but I needed to have navigation right then so I had to do the reset, lost some stuff, nothing too important (old factory reset didn't used to wipe the SD so I lost some stuff there too). Mostly annoying but neither here nor there really. I always assume that anything on my phone is volatile.

So that was that. I assumed my phone had pocket-swiped and got caught in a pin fallback. Except I'm playing with my phone now and I'm unable to duplicate the effect. I have a pattern set and a pin behind it but playing with it and getting the pattern wrong doesn't lock me into having to enter the pin. If I get the pattern wrong several times, I get prompted with forgot pattern (which prompts me for my google account info) or backup pin (which prompts me for my pin but allows me to hit the back arrow to go back to the pattern).

If it helps, I did not have encryption on this device. It was not new when I got it so I had performed a factory reset so it should have been in exactly the same state. Can anyone help me understand how I got locked into this "having to enter a pin" state?

[Edit: I just tried enabling the pin lock screen and it is different from the screen that I saw which was more like the "backup pin" screen]

As an additional question, I see there is an option to disable the auto factory reset. If you disable it, what are your options for if you forget your passwords? How would you reset the device?

Edit2: OK, the clue was in there. If the auto factory reset is disabled, you are able to go back and forth between the pattern unlock and the pin unlock. If the auto factory reset is enabled, you jump to the pin unlock and then you get 10 chances at the pin and there is apparently no way to get back to the pattern unlock. I'll reserve comment on whether having the auto factory reset enabled as the default is a good idea or not.

 

[Richy_T]

Just as an additional note, I just checked and it is not possible to unlock the device from the android device manager when it has a pattern lock or pin lock screen set

 

[gedavis]

This just happened to me after the tenth try and fail it wiped the whole internal and external cards and went in to boot loop I had to reflash the rom best thing to do is turn off the phone boot to safestrap and restore a back if you go through with the 10 tries at least pull your memory card before the 10th try

Sent from my SM-G900V using XDA Free mobile app

 

[Richy_T]

It looks like a good answer I found was that if you load up the play store on a browser on a PC, there is an app you can install that will unlock your device. Pretty smart (though not cheap [edit: actually pretty cheap, just not free]). I did need the nav but if I had known of this app, I probably would just have asked directions. I definitely should have pulled the sd card anyway.

Here is the link to the app. There is also a free version which does less. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.thomascannon.screenlockbypass.pro

Other useful info available here

http://null-byte.wonderhowto.com/ho...u-bypass-android-pattern-lock-screen-0138807/