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I have an Samsung Galaxy S3 Neo.

Bus 002 Device 042: ID 04e8:6860
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd
GT-I9100 Phone [Galaxy S II], GT-I9300 Phone [Galaxy S III], GT-P7500 [Galaxy Tab 10.1]

The keyboard & language setting is português.

I today installed Android Device Manager and to test it's functionality I locked the phone with the password: "abcd" (4 letters were required).

After entering the password and confirming with the "OK" button of my keyboard, the phone showed me that the password is wrong. "Senha incorreta".

I reset the password after some tries to "123456" and the phone reloaded the lock screen. Again the password showed up to be wrong. I also tried the alphabetic password: "abcdefg" - same error.

I changed the language of my Google account from German to Portuguese and reset the password to "123456" again and I tried to really reboot my phone and unlock the SIM card again. But anyways I can not get through my lock of the Android Device Manager.

I tried to enter the password 35 times wrong with hope to get a chance to authenticate with my Google Account login.

I also tried to connect the phone with adb but it does not show up in this state with:

adb devices

So what can I do to get access to my phone again?

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2
  • Just a thought, from my recent experience when an Android tablet started doing something I couldn't explain: Does the phone have a documented "reset to factory configuration" operation? You'd lose everything you'd installed on the phone so far, but if you've backed up fairly recently, and/or if you haven't customized it too heavily, that might be acceptable.
    – keshlam
    Jan 4, 2015 at 4:43
  • related: Android lock screen won't accept password from Android Device Manager
    – Ryan Conrad
    Jan 6, 2015 at 2:45

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
4

I tested this on a Nexus 5 (v5.0.1) running UK English. I locked the device with Device Manager then, without unlocking it, I used Device Manager to lock it a second time. I then used the second password to unlock the device. So, you should be able to change the lock password using Device Manager - it seems that only the last lock password is required to unlock it.

You can use a one character password to lock the device. Perhaps give that a try?

Another thing you could try (assuming you are using the web page to lock your phone) is to use Device Manager on a different Android device to lock your phone. Perhaps there is something wrong with the translation between the characters in the language entered into the web page and those entered into your phone.

Hopefully someone else might have a better answer than this. :(

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13
  • I tried éééééé as a password but the phone claims again that the password is wrong.
    – tokam
    Jan 4, 2015 at 2:14
  • 1
    I reproduced it. I will now wipe the phone again. How to create the bug report? At the Google telephone support where I ask (before wiping the firste time) the lady gave me this obviously wrong link: support.google.com/chrome/answer/95315?hl=en
    – tokam
    Jan 4, 2015 at 2:52
  • 1
    I created the bug-report: code.google.com/p/android/issues/…
    – tokam
    Jan 4, 2015 at 13:06
  • 1
    @tokam My apologies. I gave you the wrong link - that was for developer related bugs. This is the one you need: code.google.com/p/android/issues/… . As well, I would suggest putting as much information into the bug report itself, rather than linking to this website. Finally, it would be interesting for you to try setting your phone to US English and trying to reproduce the problem. My guess is that it would work properly, in which case you'd have evidence that the problem is language related.
    – Chris
    Jan 4, 2015 at 21:06
  • 1
    code.google.com/p/android/issues/…
    – tokam
    Jan 6, 2015 at 23:18
0

The reason it won't work is that the current version of Google's ADM does not change the password when the lock screen is already applied. The current reasoning is that it is there to lock a device that was lost/stolen, not to change the password when forgotten. So even though it says it works, it isn't. There is a message that may pop up saying:

Since Google has verified that a screen lock is already set, the password you entered won't be needed.

Though it took a bit for that to pop up on ADM, and it goes away quickly. Thanks Google.

On top of that, Samsung's proprietary changes to Android also complicates things. If the device is also registered with Samsung via Find My Phone (The Samsung Device Manager), it needs to be unlocked from there.

There is no other normal workaround. Another option is to flash a custom recovery, and unlock it via root methods, highly depends on the phone.

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0

I was having the same problem with ADM. I went to https://findmymobile.samsung.com and went to protect device (left hand side). I then clicked "Unlock screen". Took a minute but worked fine.

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3
  • It seems like you did not use the Google Device Manager. That's why you received a vote down (from someone but not me). I was not able to solve the problem.
    – tokam
    Apr 3, 2015 at 18:07
  • That's true. But the question didn't say that it needs to be unlooked via device manager. Also this way of unlocking your device will still work even if it was looked via device manager.
    – skifans
    Apr 4, 2015 at 18:47
  • How did you lock the phone? With device manager?
    – tokam
    Apr 7, 2015 at 11:43

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