How I got my Samsung Galaxy S GT-I9000 back!
My wife wanted to play with the Samsung Galaxy while I was in taking the shower this morning. I had told her the unlock pattern so she was confident enough to ignore the fifth attempt lock warning – totally unknown to the fact that I had to change the pattern in the meantime, and guess what – the phone did lock ME out!
She told about this to me and the next time I tried to unlock the phone, all I could see was the login prompt to key in my email credentials (gmail, of course!) to validate myself as owner and use it. and that DID NOT WORK. I felt miserable with this expensive electronic brick/paperweight in my hands! I had to give up attempts as had to go to work. During the day I confirmed that I can receive calls but cannot make calls.
In the evening, when I came back home, I googled the issue and tried some tricks. Regardless of whatever combination you type in – it will simply+instantly return to the ‘now familiar’ invalid-username-or-password screen. I later found out that this is a reported bug and well-grieved-about on the forums. I had a long chat with Three Mobile customer care’s technical support person over 133320, who seemed to be either ignorant to newbie to such problems. What they said was like – we don’t know much about the phone yet as it is a fairly new addition, and hence you will have to call Samsung Australia about unlocking it properly, we don’t have exactly guidelines about performing ‘hard reset’ under such circumstances, and yes, forget not that should you need to bring this phone to one of our service centers, unfortunately we will have to charge you about $39 for recovery as this is not covered under warranty (like water/moisture damage or physical breakage)!
I tried hard to find a way to keep the data and get out of this screen
Some of the posts on internet (Google: Samsung galaxy S pattern lock) suggested what “3BR” a three button reset with the Up Volume+Menu+Power (in same order) to get the recovery options screen and select to do a factory reset. (Nice UI there, they provide you a list of ten options, all being ‘No’ except one and only the eighth option that is “YES Please go ahead and wipe all my personal data from the phone!”, so you have to press the down key literally seven times to highlight the Yes option and click the middle button to accept the selection!). I did that about three times, did NOT work!
I was so frustrated and angry with the stupidity of the smartphones, that I almost decided to flush the phone. But due to the Samsung TouchWiz inteface that I have liked since I used to use Samsung Jet S8003 and especially the SWYPE input tool that I love, that did not look like an options – I was also afraid of losing the warranty, even though I was sure by this time that probably I know more than that three support center guy just by googling things about the phone!
Now, I took a break, spent some time on clearing the backlog of Google Reader list and on the next google search I found this guy talking about a code to be dialled to factory-reset the phone (whiskeybro gives the code *2767*3855# on http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=706719). I remembered that the unlock with email login screen offers access to dial pad for making emergency calls, but when I tried to call this number, the locking BI was fine enough to identify the number to be not an emergency number and hence denied access.
HERE IS WHAT WORKED
Now I remembered also that when I received a coupla calls from friends, the call screen allowed me to ‘Add call’ to add a conference call. I called myself from my partener’s mobile and while on call, used that ‘Add call’ button to dial *2767*3855# and pressed call button on screen. Voila! it reset!
Typing this at 2AM more to help someone out of frustration than to advertise win in the battle with the ‘simply amazing’ gadget! Hope it helps!
