Hello!
I am new to this forum and also completely new to phone modding etc.
I will shortly explain what situation I am in so maybe someone can enlighten me a little so I know what to do.
A year ago I bought a phone on polish trading site called Allegro.pl, for months it worked without issues, it was a brand new phone.
A few weeks ago a message popped on screen telling me the phone is now locked due to failure in monthly payments. (Previous owner).
I tried all ways of contacting the seller but to no avail. His phone number is off, he does not answer e-mails.
I decided to just ditch the phone and use some old backup phone I had saved. The problem however is that the old phone died and right now I can't afford buying a new one.
Getting this phone into a working condition (without any lock) is my only option so here are the things I have done so far:
I have flashed the latest Android 10 Firmware but right after the initial set up is done (after recovery) the phone locks.
There is no window with the information anymore however, but I can't use any of phone's options or apps in anyway.
I have found a way to bypass that for a brief moment and managed to turn OEM lock off and Enable USB debugging.
(When phone asks for Wi-Fi network I used my old SIM card and told the phone to connect using SIM's connection and right after the initial setup is done I quickly unplugged the SIM so the phone has no connection to internet anymore and the lock didn't start right away. It took me a while to figure it out, been sitting in front of my PC up until 5 am last night.)
If I install TWRP and a custom rom will it bypass the lock on the phone and will I be able to use it normally again?
Will I have to change the firmware somehow, or what exactly will I have to do to make use of the phone again?
IMEI's appear to not be locked as of now.
Any help, information, advice on this subject will be greatly appreciated!
Related
hello ALL!
i am an AVID android user, and have been using xda for YEARS, even contributed many things to this site, in way of help, mods, and other things, never built roms but worked closely as a tester with some big developers.
recently while riding my bike home from work, i saw a phone scattered in pieces down the street. i picked up all pieces and put back together when i got home, and surprisingly it turned on with no issue, didn't even need to charge battery.
so now, i cannot access it because it has a pin passcode(ive tried all your "run of the mill ones" Plus after a few guesses and then battery dying, , it is NOW telling me I HAVE to WAIT 2680 MINUTES until next attempt....seriously?!?! 2680 MINUTES?!?! THATS NEARLY TWO DAYS!!!!!!
anyways
i need someones help here, i am TRYING to return this device to it's owner, but without a valid passcode to enter, i cannot get into their contacts and try to call anyone they might know in order to return the device.
so if ANYONE knows of a toolkit, or command line thing i can do/use in order to remove/change this pin lock, i would be very grateful.
i DONT want to wipe the device and end up without ANY info on the owner or even anything that might help me return it.
ANY IDEAS ???
I HAD SEEN MENTION OF WINDOWS PHONE RECOVERY KIT
would THAT be useful in this situation?
or basically am i stuck with resetting the phone and HOPING something is left on sdcard that will have info as to the owner of device???
ashclepdia said:
hello ALL!
i am an AVID android user, and have been using xda for YEARS, even contributed many things to this site, in way of help, mods, and other things, never built roms but worked closely as a tester with some big developers.
recently while riding my bike home from work, i saw a phone scattered in pieces down the street. i picked up all pieces and put back together when i got home, and surprisingly it turned on with no issue, didn't even need to charge battery.
so now, i cannot access it because it has a pin passcode(ive tried all your "run of the mill ones" Plus after a few guesses and then battery dying, , it is NOW telling me I HAVE to WAIT 2680 MINUTES until next attempt....seriously?!?! 2680 MINUTES?!?! THATS NEARLY TWO DAYS!!!!!!
anyways
i need someones help here, i am TRYING to return this device to it's owner, but without a valid passcode to enter, i cannot get into their contacts and try to call anyone they might know in order to return the device.
so if ANYONE knows of a toolkit, or command line thing i can do/use in order to remove/change this pin lock, i would be very grateful.
i DONT want to wipe the device and end up without ANY info on the owner or even anything that might help me return it.
ANY IDEAS ???
I HAD SEEN MENTION OF WINDOWS PHONE RECOVERY KIT
would THAT be useful in this situation?
or basically am i stuck with resetting the phone and HOPING something is left on sdcard that will have info as to the owner of device???
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You could try to put the SIM in an other phone, he might have contacts stored on his SIM.
Also same thing with the SD Card but doubt there'll be anything helpful in there.
On WP unfortunately there is no way to remove the lock without doing a hard reset which will wipe everything except the SD Card and contacts on the SIM so it's the same as inserting the SD and SIM in an other phone, better not hard reset it so the owner doesn't loose all he has on there.
I like how you use the word "unfortunately" about there being no way to bypass the one crucial security feature of the phone... The lock screen is there for a reason! If you'd tried messing with my phone that way, it would already have wiped itself.
To the OP, leave it powered on and connected to the Internet, and the owner will be able to find it eventually. The "my Windows Phone" (or whatever it's called now) website allows the owner to get the phone's GPS location, and also to display a message (such as "please email me at <this address> if you found my phone!") on the screen. If they never come for it, then... free phone, I guess? I'm not usually a fan of "finders keepers" but there's no excuse for a WP owner not even trying the existing tools to get the phone back, if they want it back at all.
If you really want to go above and beyond the call of duty, I suppose you could check the SIM from the phone and see what carrier it's for, then call the carrier and see if they have any way to get in touch with the phone's owner...
This has likely long been resolved, but here's what I would do.
Take the SIM, put it in another phone. Check "about" to see what the phone number is. Call that number.
If you get an answer, there's your missing phone's owner with a new phone and SIM card. Let them know you found their phone. No answer, leave voicemail.
PepperdotNet said:
This has likely long been resolved, but here's what I would do.
Take the SIM, put it in another phone. Check "about" to see what the phone number is. Call that number.
If you get an answer, there's your missing phone's owner with a new phone and SIM card. Let them know you found their phone. No answer, leave voicemail.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes you are correct, has been resolved, good tip though thank you, found owner and was told to keep device, they had gotten new one, they don't know how it ended up on side of street, but I ended up giving to someone I had worked with who was in need of an at&t device.
Thank you, and all others, for all assistance.
Ended up that the owner actually knew someone that I was working with at the time, small world huh, funny how it all worked out, was just happy to help everyone out in the end. Was just a funny circle of events that led to the device getting to who has it now.
I hate posting in forums, so please understand that this posting comes after many many hours of researching and attempting different fixes. Can someone please help me sort this out and get me up and running again. I will be brief and direct hopefully including all necessary info for you.
Device is N920A, AT&T
Was in the process of transferring my data on a 32GB to my wife's phone, a 64GB..
Ran the reset it came back up, used it for a few minutes, it ran update and locked me out.
THE PROBLEM
When googles wonderful FRP wants to verify the accounts, it will not accept and of the old accounts of neither my wife's or mine.
I was able to pull it up on one of my accounts Device Manager. When I lock it with new passcode and message,
It displays the message on the screen but wont unlock.
Tried again and noticed in Device Manager it said no new passcode was needed because previous lock PIN still existed.
Reset AGAIN... No longer finds phone attached to any google account.
EVEN BIGGER PROBLEM
Just got the phone back from repair shop where they swapped motherboards with my phone and my wife's phone.
Reason for this? Originally 64gb device had cracked screen Insurance would not replace with 64gb because it was discontinued. Cracked screen was $300 to replace, swapping motherboards only cost me $80. I haven't even swapped the IMEI numbers with AT&T, but phones did work upon getting home and resetting .
PLEASE let me know what I can do. Need this phone for work ASAP.
I am abroad for a semester. I bought another plan for when I was abroad. The new sim card came with several codes on it which resulted in me attempting too many times to unlock my phone. After a week or two, I finally made the connection that the 'SIM Network Unlock PIN' was supposed to come from my USA carrier AT&T. After hours on the phone with them, they pretty much told me my phone was a brick. Only good with wifi. I am hoping there is a way to bypass this 5 attempt limit with some changes.
I've looked for possibilities in the
Developer Options
Service Mode (Only thing that shows up is [error] <RAT_NONE>)
But can't figure out a way to work around this 5 attempt limit.
I have all of my information backed up and haven't made the final move to factory reset my phone (if that would even work), hoping that there was some other way!
Also I have not been able to figure out why my phone won't connect to my Mac computer. When connected by USB it only charges. I couldn't find the option to switch to MTP!
Any help is much appreciated!
Hello.
A friend of mine worked at a company that closed last week, and they had some demo-based Galaxy Note 8 phone that were unused. So I took one of them, and I'm now trying to make it work with my SIM Card.
I don't looks like it recognize it, phone network isn't available, IMEI is unknown, and Service Menu (that i tried to turn radio on) is blank (I accessed it trough *#0011#). I passed like 5 hours googling, but since it seems to be a very specific issue (the phone was probably locked for Demo puprposes.). I tried a custom ROM, I rooted the phone, but nothing changed.
I'm sorry if my question isn't that accurate and descriptive, got a real headache trying to find an issue tonight. Feel free to ask for precisions.
Thanks for helping, as always.
Demo units will not function as normal legally acquired devices do, no solution will work, get a really working device, xdemo units are exactly that, just for show
Changing motherboard won't do the trick ?
It will, but I would rather get a never opened device, besides, a motherboard will not be cheap
Hello all.
I got myself an used SM-N950U originally from Verizon and sold as unlocked. Now my problem is I cannot connect to/use my sim with it. Originally I thought it was locked since there's an app that says "not a Verizon sim", but then I realized this app is an userspace app so to say, part of the Verizon bloatware and doesn't mean the phone. I know specially since with that phone I also got an S10+ from a friend, also from Verizon, which does see and use my sim right and which also has that same message from the same app. But works well.
Now, I don't really have the option to return this phone, since it was shipped outside the US, and shipping back would cost me half as much as what the phone cost. So I'm on my own.
At least I'm resourceful, but not that knowledgeable so that's why I come here for help.
The phone diagnostics, for the network, says in a status line "Radio off". and no info on the network. and if I try to manually select a network on connection settings, I immediately get an error. This happens wether I'm using my local sim, the old deactivated Verizon sim from my friend, and no sim... since the phone should be abe by law to make emergency calls, and it should be able to see visible networks even if not to join them, it's my guess that rather than locked, it has the radio turned off, which in some web pages says can sometimes happen "for various reasons".
My problem is, as far as I know, I have no way to turn the radio off and on again to see if that boots it up. Since this VZW Pie from has no service codes available via dialer. Not even the most basic *#06# service menu.
I see there's supposedly a way to flash the firmware back to Nougat, and root that from, on This thread. I'm guessing if I can make that work (I hope it works) I can access the service menus somehow, with it being an older rom, and having root I can probably use "Phone INFO" to get to them and try to reset the radio.
But before I do all that, and since my firmware downloads, to update to a new firmware via odin (given the warning on the root page to not use a v8 bootloader that was updated from v7 to v8 via OTA but rather something with v8 flashed directly via Odin, to avoid a possible brick). and to install the rooteable nougat will take me days to download at my speeds, I take this time to ask for help on wether there's ANY way to check and flip the radio without having to go to Nougat and root (I think I can even be happy without root on Pie for a short while.)
Ok, I'm starting to think the power connector board got damaged or the connector partially disconnected during the shipping or something.
I've installed first a N950U1 xaa rom, to make sure the v8 was installed via odin and not OTA. Then loaded a combination from and rooted as per the root post shared in the first message. This one can use service codes with the factory time (I've not installed a normal rooted nougat rom yet, as I want to do tests beforehand and try to make the radio work).
Inside *#0011# My IMEI shows as passing, but I get an ASM MIPI DEVICE FAIL:
ASM MIPI DEVICE FAIL
DEVICE MOD=0x217 , PID=0x081
Non-Fatal MIPI DEVICE FAIL
DEVICE MOD=0x217 , PID=0x081
ASDiv : NOT SUPPORTED
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tried running the Samsung Mipi Repair Tool, it detects the info, I hit repair, says it's repaired and that it'll open a menu, which does NOT open. Yet, if I open a menu with *#27663368378# and then rebuild NV with: 2. Ue Setting Info-->1.Setting-->2.System-->3.nv rebuid-->3.all, and then turn the phone off (Factory doesn't seem to have reboot) and on, still the same MIPI issue.
So I'm guessing either the board around the charge port got damaged somehow during the trip (my friend tested the phone before shipping it to me from the US), or the connector for it got loose. Anyway, I'm worried I'll have to open the phone myself (I haven't found a trustworthy tech in here. Last time I took a phone to a "recommended" tech, they stole the OEM screen from my dad's J8. So, no more techs for me unless I can find one I can befriend, and trust). If the connector to the board is not lose (I'll reseat it) I'll have to look for a new board, either abroad or here, probably not oem and with a lousier usb-c port, and swap the boards... sigh.
Anyhow since this will take time, if anyone knows of any other program or procedure I can use to test things, please let me know. I will keep the factory rom on the phone, either as the sole one or in a rom slot in safestrap, so that I can keep doing tests.
I appreciate any hints or help anybody could provide.