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I have Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini unrooted and I think the Android version is 4.4. Recently, I installed a WiFi Keyboard application on my Android phone. This way, since both the phone and my computer were connected to the same WiFi network, I could access the phone's keyboard from my computer. After that, the phone disconnected from the WiFi network and got locked (I had a password set on the lock screen). And now I cannot enter it, because I cannot enable any other keyboard than the WiFi one (which doesn't work because the phone has no WiFi).

What I've tried:

  • I can do nothing on the lock screen, everything's blocked. The swipe doesn't work to change the keyboard. Also, there's no settings box. And I cannot drag the notification bar.
  • I tried the adb shell ime command, but without luck. It doesn't seem to do anything. 
    me@myPC:/$ sudo adb shell ime list -s
me@myPC:/$

Additional Data:

  • Storage and SD card are encrypted. SD card has important data, so I can't simply wipe the phone.
  • I am able to enter my password in the Decryption screen as the normal keyboard shows up, but not in the lock screen.

Can I enable it via ADB or any similar way? Are there any solutions to this problem?

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  • "SD card has important data, so I can't simply wipe the phone." You could take the SD card out and back up the important data. You should do that anyway!
    – Dan Hulme
    Aug 15, 2014 at 8:30
  • Thanks for the suggestion Dan, but unfortunately the contents of the SD card are encrypted, and therefore even though I have backed them up, I still cannot read them. And I think that the only way to be able to read them again is opening the SD card from the phone.
    – Andrey
    Aug 15, 2014 at 10:30
  • Ah, that explains it. Even so, if there's anything important on your SD card, you should back it up now the phone's working. We get a lot of questions from people who only realise this after dropping and breaking, or losing their phone.
    – Dan Hulme
    Aug 15, 2014 at 11:49
  • Haha, yeah, indeed, most of us realize what we should have done when it's already too late. Going to do the backup ASAP. Thank you for your help, by the way.
    – Andrey
    Aug 15, 2014 at 15:15

2 Answers 2

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Try seeing if you can login when you are in safe mode. Boot into safe mode by holding down the power button to open the menu, then hold down the power-off button, and click "OK" when it asks you to reboot into safe mode. Then attempt to login once the phone restarts, and re-enable the virtual keyboard.

Hope this helps.

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According to OP's 3rd revision,

This problem was solved by booting into safe mode, as proposed by ak11234.

I did so by holding the volume down key while powering on my device (pressed the power on button, waited for the phone logo to show ("Samsung" and the model number), released the power button and held the volume down key until the lock screen appeared).

However, these instructions vary from phone to phone. The ones described worked for Galaxy S3 mini.

You can find instructions for the most common phones that have Android on this webpage: http://www.droidviews.com/how-to-boot-android-devices-into-safe-mode/

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