Android 4.1 Locked Out

Question

I am messing with an old Android my Little Sister had before she switched to the “darkside” (iPhone).

It has a 4 pin lockscreen (Not 3rd party) and my sister forgot the pin. I removed it from device manager years ago cause she didn’t use it, so I can’t remote whipe or anything.

Being a casual user, my sister never enabled USB Debugging, so I can’t connect to a PC and access it that way.

The WiFi is off and her service was discontinued 2 years ago so I can’t do anything that way.

Tracfone also disabled recovery mode, so holding Power+Vol+ sends it into a bootloop until I let go and it boots to Android. I tried every possible combo and even letting go and clicking them again to no luck.

It’s an LG Optimus Fuel running non-rooted Android 4.4 with the LG Optimus UI Launcher.

I assume it’s a brick, but is there any thing I can try?

Answer 1

You can still flash the phone by installing a new ROM, this will factory reset the device. But I think you are doing wrong while trying to manually hard reset the phone. Follow the steps below:

Works for Tracfone LG L34C Optimus Fuel model:

It’s a little bit complicated, just follow this guide:

• Power OFF the phone.
• Press and hold Power button and Volume Down button in the same time for several seconds.
• Keep doing this until you see LG logo appears on the screen. When the logo is appear, release both buttons but for 1 seconds only.
• Remember to release both buttons just for 1 seconds before you press and hold them once again.
• If you do it right, the device will boot into Recovery Mode. Now you can release both buttons.
• In recovery mode, navigate through the menu using both Volume buttons and Power button to select.
• Select YES on the first dialog box and another dialog box will also show up to confirm your action. In the second dialog box, select “Yes” and let the factory reset process begin.
• Done.