It’s happened to me and it’s probably happened to you: you’re in a rush and you type in the wrong PIN for your Android device. No worries, you can just try again, right? Fortunately, it takes a lot of incorrect tries to get locked out and even then, you can just wait a few minutes and have another go.
But now, something even worse could occur if you have a Samsung Galaxy phone: a full factory reset.
A consequence of One UI 9
The arrival of One UI 9 is going to mean lockscreen security changes, according to Samsung. If you hit 13 failed attempts of entering your PIN, pattern, or password, your Galaxy device will be permanently locked and can only be unlocked by performing a factory reset.
“In One UI 9.0, the total allowed attempts before a lockdown are reduced, and the temporary input restriction (lockout duration) is strictly enforced,” Samsung said. “As the number of consecutive failures increases, the time-out duration before you can try again will scale up progressively at each stage.”
Samsung said the change is to prevent data breaches.
The chart below shows the attempt thresholds and corresponding lockout durations.
A warning before the final lockout
Samsung acknowledged the consequences of the new policy in the announcement and said that to reduce the issues associated with a factory reset, there are some safeguards.
Devices will notify you of how many retry attempts remain and you’ll get an explicit guidance text when there are repetitive incorrect entries. Also, if you enter the same incorrect password twice in a row, it only counts as a single failure.
Biometrics do not offer a bypass
Your first instinct on reading this might be to eliminate your reliance on entering a PIN, pattern, or password, but that won’t work.
Even if you unlock your Galaxy with your face or a fingerprint, every 72 hours, Android’s core security policy requires you to enter your backup PIN, pattern, or password.
Samsung cannot access your PIN, pattern, or password, so a call or message to customer service will not help you.
What you can do
Your best bet is to keep all of your important info backed up. Set up regular cloud or Samsung Smart Switch backups.
To not make a bad situation worse should you have to factory reset your device, make sure you have the correct info on hand to authenticate your Samsung or Google account because you’ll need it to clear the Factory Reset Protection (FRP) lock.
