Forgot password, need someone HIGH Tech.

brucemc777 · Jan 19, 2021

I strongly suspect we are up the proverbial creek.

A couple months ago our puppy decided to make my wife's S8 into a chew toy. Though we got to it fairly fast, it was not before the screen was punctured through. The phone subsequently entirely discharged.

Though the touch screen no longer responds, i am able to communicate by plugging a USB keyboard into the phone; i can get a partial charge in, then connect the keyboard. Problem is, now when i bring it up it wants a password, which my wife does not recall. We have 6 attempts remaining.

She never transferred a couple year's worth of pictures that we would like to recover, but without the password, we can not unlock the phone to be able to enable data transfer over USB.

Shy of the NSA, are there any solutions out there?

Thank-you for your consideration-

Dannydet · Jan 19, 2021

IF she was using Google photos on her device, they would all have been automatically backed up to the cloud.
Simply login on a pc, mac, laptop, etc. to her Gmail account, or photos.google.com to access them all.

ocnbrze · Jan 19, 2021

why not take it in to get the screen replaced? if you are a dyi kind of person you can go here https://www.ifixit.com. it has parts and the tools as well as guides on how to replace and repair your phone yourself.

also +1 (do people still do this) to google photos that @Dannydet suggested for future knowledge. google photos will automatically save your photos to the cloud. i could literally take a picture and wait for it to sync with google's server (usually takes a few minutes), hop on my pc and view my photo without having to hook up the phone to the computer or mess with sd cards. i would look into using it going forward.

brucemc777 · Jan 19, 2021

Thank-you!

Oh good, she can't recall even what her gmail address is. Maybe i am on a bad sitcom...

Will have to research; i suspect we should find some trace...

Most importantly, thank you very much for the suggestion, i appreciate your help very much-

ocnbrze · Jan 19, 2021

brucemc777 said:
Thank-you!

Oh good, she can't recall even what her gmail address is. Maybe i am on a bad sitcom...

Will have to research; i suspect we should find some trace...

Most importantly, thank you very much for the suggestion, i appreciate your help very much-

LOL keep us posted. if you have any more questions, you know where to go

brucemc777 · Jan 19, 2021

Was able to get in, she found the credentials. Unfortunately she didn't have it set to automatically store. Down to 2 tries left on the phone, and she can't recall ever having set a password, just her four digit PIN she says. Guess there are much worse tragedies, but i really hate frustration.

Again, thank you for trying to help us, i really do appreciate your efforts-

Hadron · Jan 20, 2021

Before using your last 2 tries the thing to do is try to work out why it's asking for a password, which may tell us which password it's asking for. Can you tell us exactly what it says on the screen when it asks?

brucemc777 · Jan 20, 2021

The screen reads:

Use password after restart. (2 attempts left) Your password contains at least 4 characters, including at least 1 letter.

Hadron · Jan 20, 2021

Hmm, being Samsung the wording is a little different, but to me that sounds like the normal Android behaviour that after restarting you need to enter your lock screen password or PIN before you can use the fingerprint scanner. The only problem is that from what you say she used a PIN for that, and as it's something that would happen every time she restarted the phone I would expect her to recognise it if that is what it is.

I did find this Samsung help page on unlocking phones. There are options here that might help if the necessary things are set up, but I suspect things do need to be set up already for them to work.

If you had more than 2 tries left I'd suggest trying the PIN anyway, despite what the message says, but it does indeed sound like it wants a password. If she hasn't set a lockscreen password the only 2 I can think of are the Google account password and the Samsung account password (if she created one). But with only 2 attempts remaining, and not knowing what happens if you use them all, I'd wait and see whether anyone else (such as a Samsung owner) recognises this and can shed any more light.

brucemc777 · Jan 20, 2021

Thank you for your help!

The first 5 to 8 attempts were with guesses at what her PIN would have been (after the first failed that she believed was correct, she started coming up with alternate combinations under the presumption that it should be a PIN and she simply seniled out on it), before i read that little part about password and character. I then had her figure out what her Google pw was with the primary hope that there was an automatic backup running. After that failed, i tried the Google password on the phone and burnt another attempt.

I will be reading the referred page, but as cited before, i suspect shy of quickly developing a high placed friend with the NSA, i think we are up that creek.

Many thanks,
-Bruce

dontpanicbobby · Jan 30, 2021

Does this have anything to do with 1/4 billion dollars?

Forgot password, need someone HIGH Tech.

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