An unpleasant situation in which many smartphone owners have fallen, now occurs not as often as before, but it still happens. I’m talking about a forgotten PIN code from your phone. Biometric unlocking systems have done their job and now the password is often just not needed. On the other hand, isn’t that an excuse to forget it? But still, this happens most often at times when you don’t use your smartphone for a long time. In this situation, forgetting the lock code is much easier. And if you’ve forgotten the PIN or lock screen pattern of your Android Phone, we have these solutions to fix it and recover your phone.
There are also situations where children could accidentally change the PIN or other variations of it, but the result is the same – the smartphone does not work. It used to be possible to almost reset the lock settings and gain access to the handset on a reboot, but now times have changed. It’s good that there are other ways left.
How to unlock a smartphone locally or when connected to a network
A nice feature of some versions of Android is the ability to unlock your smartphone in normal use. This means connecting to familiar networks, visiting certain locations, or connecting to certain gadgets.
That is, you don’t even need to know the PIN code of your smartphone when you are at home and connected to your Wi-Fi network. This can be an ideal solution if you forget your lock code. Except you have to activate the feature beforehand.
To do this, open your settings and search for Smart Lock. You can find the item on your own, but it is often in different sections, although you should first look in the security settings.
So, by selecting the Bluetooth audio system in your car as a secure device, you won’t have to think about unlocking it while you’re on the road. If you connect a tracker, it’s even easier, and choosing a home location will be handy for using your phone as a home location. Once you take it away, you’ll have to enter the PIN to unlock it. But in other cases you can do without it. The main thing is to remember that Bluetooth works at a distance of several tens of meters, and this affects security.
Turning this feature on beforehand will make it easier to use the phone and sometimes bypass the locks, but if you want to reset the password, you will not be able to do this – you will have to enter it before resetting.
How to reset your phone’s PIN if you don’t know it
For quite some time now – since the days of Android 4.4 – Google has come up with a convenient way to unlock it. It allows you to bypass the password if you know the details of the account your device is tethered to.
The essence of the unlock method is that after five incorrect attempts to unlock your smartphone with a PIN, password or a picture key, you will be asked to keep your Google account password. If you don’t remember it either, the password can be restored using, for example, your phone number or a backup e-mail address.
The only requirement is that your phone must be connected to the Internet in order to be able to connect to a Google server and authenticate your password. But don’t forget that it doesn’t work on all devices.
Resetting your smartphone password via Google
Another way to reset your password comes down to connecting through Google. To do this, you’ll need to go to your Google account and open a list of your devices. You can go straight to locating them on a map by clicking on this link.
If you have several devices, you will need to select the desired one from the list. From there you will get additional features in the form of searching the phone on the map, sound playback if you can’t find the phone, and a full remote reset. Resetting the phone this way will cause you to lose all your data, but if copies of it are saved in Google Drive, that won’t be a problem. The main thing is to be sure that copies were created and the last one was recently.
This is a pretty radical way to do it, but it works. I would save it for last, after everything has been tried. As is the next option, with a full device reset.
Resetting your Android smartphone.
The last way to solve the problem with the inability to unlock will be a full reset of the smartphone through recovery mode.
How to do such a reset, we have already repeatedly told on our website. For example, we talked about the reset methods and the need to do it in this article.
Here again, we just need to remember that the memory of the smartphone will be completely cleared. In a few minutes, the smartphone will reset to the state in which you need to reactivate it. After activation, you will be able to sync the gadget with the server and download the latest backup or just use a clean device.
The main thing to understand is that only your smartphone can be reset in this way. The phone lock password will be reset, but the binding to the Google account will remain, and without entering the password from the personal account you won’t be able to connect to the network.
As you can see, it is possible to bypass the lock screen, but only the owner of the smartphone can do it. You can’t unlock someone else’s device in this way. That’s why this method can be considered not a loophole, but a clever form of device recovery.
