Note: for anyone with a G1 with this same problem who found this entry by Googling, you don’t have to lose any data — we eventually found a workaround that doesn’t require a factory reset. Details are at the bottom of this post.
I’ve hit the end of the flowchart, it’s 3 AM, and I’m turning to you all.
I’m at my cousin’s wedding and I’ve been locked out of my G1 phone. I was idly playing with the screen unlock pattern (it’s fun to draw G1 unlock patterns) and it eventually said I’d made too many attempts and asked for my Google account email and password. I typed them in.
They don’t work. (Edit: and the username/password are correct — they work fine for logging in via the web, and they’ve worked recently in other parts of the phone.) I tried every variation on the email (it’s an @xkcd.com email, not @gmail.com) and every password I’ve ever used for anything Google-related. It still says ‘incorrect username or password’. It’s the middle of the night, I’m exhausted, and I was about to set my phone as an alarm clock to wake me up for the wedding.
I’ve googled around and found lots of other people with the same problem. They seem to suggest it’s simply an Android bug, and the only solution is a factory reset of the phone. This will lose all my app data. Music, photos, and contact lists will be saved, but I’ll have to redownload all my apps, and I’ll lose my call history, Google Tracks, saved games, Shazam tagged songs, and a pile of text messages containing useful information and/or sentimental minimalist poems.
The phone is not a dev/rooted phone, so a few hacks I found with ADB won’t work. Does anyone know anything else I can do, or is this an unfixable bug? I just want my phone back. I would really appreciate any help anyone can give. I’ll watch here for a little bit, then find something else to use as an alarm and see if there’s a solution in the morning.
Thank you in advance.
Edit: I’ve used the bug mentioned in #28 here (thanks, Julian!) to successfully get to the home screen. I couldn’t believe it actually worked, but it does — you can unlock the phone by getting a call and flipping the screen open and shut repeatedly while tapping ‘home’. Now I can get into the phone by opening the keyboard, but if I just try to touch ‘menu’ it’s still locked. This is still annoying, but I can deal with it for now (I’ll let it finish syncing and try reboots and stuff). Thank you so much, internet. <3
Edit #2: Thanks to Dan Egnor over at Google, I’ve gotten the last piece. The phone was tied to my Google Apps account rather than my Google account, which have the same email address as their name (and I had tried the passwords for both, of course). By changing the password for the Google Apps account (not the Google account), I made the phone fail to sync, which prompted me for a new password — which was then saved properly. When the lockout screen came up next, I entered that password, and my phone is back. So, in summary, to fix this without wiping your phone, you:
- Get someone to call you.
- After answering, flip the screen open and shut repeatedly, tapping the “home” button every few flips. Eventually you’ll drop through to your home screen. This may take a few tries.
- Go into your security settings and disable the unlock pattern. You can now bypass the lockout just by opening the keyboard.
- Change the password on your account, which may be your Google Apps account if you have one.
- In a few moments, your phone will fail to sync with email and prompt you for a password. Enter the new password.
- You can now log in with the new password. Lock your screen, press menu to try unlocking it, and enter your new information. This should unlock your phone.
Randall, I just found this on a facebook advert: http://auction-bot.appspot.com/
It appears to me to be a phishing site trying to steal via the announced xckd book… You might want to look into dealing with it.
@Caleb: Yeah, that does look like a scam…
Oh wait, we fail… If you look at the post on the blag about the book it says something about the xkcd school in Laos.. it’s not a scam…
You can try reset pettern using ddms: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=485988
Oh I did this at the end of the summer to my G1 and I was so pissed. I had to go through a hard format to reset it I think, which is also a working solution, but it’s not a good nor a fun one, because I didn’t know about this one.
Glad you had a working solution.
was the wedding really that boring?
Enduring by virtue of perfect design? Perfect design?! Please, Mr. Munroe, don’t tell me you’re a moronic Creationist or IDist..
(Off topic) in re Bridge to Terabithia. I had the same reaction you did to the trailer, but I saw the movie anyway, and I can say that while the movie was not as good as the book (are they ever?), the movie was much closer to the book than the trailer implied. It was basically a marketing mistake, presumably to try to make it look like a “fantasy” movie and cash in on that trend. But the movie was really pretty true to the story, and not at all focused on the “fantasy” aspects, if you could even call them that, as the trailer implied. FWIW.
Check out your LJ comments,
I really wanna know if safemode will work
your last comic was beautiful, like the others…drunk, mais, se vrai
Does anyone know how to do this on a HTC Magic as I donet have flip screen?
So my G1 just did the same bullshit and thanks to you i got through to the home screen. However, I have changed my password on the Google Account and I can’t resync my gmail with the new password, which is REALLY pissing me off. I mean WTF google… I want reparations, srsly…
This happened to me (ironically enough) at Defcon. One of my friends wanted to know what would happen if I got the pattern wrong too many times.
I found some Android hackers and I had left my phone in debug mode so we were able to look into the problem. Unfortunately we didn’t have enough time to work out a solution since I really needed my phone to schedule stuff. I ended up doing a factory reset. I lost one contact and all my archived SMS but I can live with that.
whan I sign it say that there is a problem that my sim maybe provisioned for data services
you’re a freaking genius!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hey Geniuses—
Just take the battery out and put it back in.
Does this trick work for htc hero ?? i cant work it out on mine…
~HTC MAGIC SOLUTION~HTC MAGIC SOLUTION~HTC MAGIC SOLUTION~
Hokay, just had this problem with my (Vodafone) HTC Magic. I found that ‘machine gunning the Home key (the physical one with the house icon), and then selecting the (on screen) Emergency Dialer in a normal manner works well.
Basically, do the above, if it doesn’t work, revert back to the Username/Password screen, and continue this process until it does.
Hope this helps.
[Took me about 7 to 8 cycles of the above process the first time, and about 6 when I (riskily) did it again to "see how easy it was!" ]
[N.B. The Vodafone UK edition has a slightly compromised system, so it's possible that any delay needed to "fall through" to the home screen may be greater than it's American counterpart.]
just wanted to post thank you. you save me.
How cum this is not working for me im gettin sooo pissed plz i need help someone
Has anyone got this to work with the htc hero/t-mobile g2 touch?
I’m going mental with this.
please email argh@itbeme.net if you get it to work THanks
IT WORKKEEDD!!!!! thanks so much
see.. iPhone’s aren’t all bad
My daughter broke my g1 she took the screen out the phone can my phone could be fix yes or no or what can I do about it
Worst Bug…In the World…
So today while a portion of the Willow Springs 10 were working at the Heritage Hall my phone became locked. You see, Android devices have this nifty way of unlocking where you draw patterns on the screen. However, if a user enters an incorrect patter…
[...] many thanks to the peeps over at issue thread #3006 and xkcd.com [...]