My wife is having a crisis here with her new note 5, the long story short is that she was away at Disney world (we live in Michigan, not sure if the geography had an impact) and she had her phone locked with the retarded finger print scanner. She tried to unlock it while her finger was wet and not only did it not unlock but it also continued to register tries and locked her phone and requested google account password. She apparently had two google accounts synced to the phone and she had no idea which was primary, add to that that she has a terrible memory, well, she waited until she had one try left to call and ask me if I could get it for her from her planner in the house. For whatever reason this password didn't work either (even though I could log into her gmail with it) and the phone did a forced factory reset. Ok, no big deal, right?
Phone reboots, starts the setup wizard, goes to what looks like a google screen which says this phone experienced an abnormal factory reset and you must sign in with a gmail account which was previously synced (it defenitely say "a gmail account" not "the gmail" or Primary gmail). So she signs in with the gmail that we know we had the right password for. The phone reboots and comes back to the same screen. Her gmail gets a message that SM-n920V signed in with this account and I went into the android devices and verified that "it was me". By this time I was at work and the only thing I could think was that it must need the proimary and that must be the other one, so in order to get her other gmail account working and I had to reset it's password (one gmail was backup to the other), ok, so I get both gmail accounts working. She tries to log in with that one and the it behaves exactly the same.
I was at work by this time and I start trying to research this and I find it's probably tied to samsungs FRP. I try to log into the samsung account and neither gmail is tied to it. I finally find it and it is tied to a yahoo account that she also has no idea what the password is. I manage to reset the yahoo account, and then the damned samsung account and now I can look at everything.
The only mention I can find about FRP on the samsung site is in a FAQ that I find and I find a little tidbit in there that says that if you change your google password you have to wait 72 hours to log back in with it. I have no idea how the samsung account would know the google password reset, but also, there are no prompts on the phone that mention this. it just asks for the account again and again.
So, my wife calls Verizon, they are clueless but they transfer her to samsung. Samsung support was apparently horrible with her, but regardless, they tell her it's googles fault and transfer her to google, google says it's a samsung bug and sends her back to samsung. Samsung finally tells her what I found about the FRP in the begining, that there is a 72hr cooldown, but FURTHERMORE, they tell her that she can't try the account until 72hrs are up, that just by trying to log in means she has to RESET PASSWORDS AGAIN and then just sit with her thumb up her butt for "up to 72 hrs" they tell her this time. They also said she would get an email when she can log in, but we still have no idea to which account...
So, all parties involved are fully satisfied that this is indeed her device but they claim there is no way to expedite this. I also know that this is 99% her fault, but come on, this is ridiculous. I also am not convinced that after 72 hours, which is really up to 96 now because it took until the second night after all of this to get an answer from tech support. Meanwhile my family is clear across the country and now with minimal communication capability. They got home safely today, and tonight would have been the initial end of 72 hours, but apparently she will be waiting for tomorrow night because they made her reset again. When she got home I tried to completely reflash the phone with odin, and it was 100% successful, but as soon as it boots it goes to software update does a really quick update (which I suspect is the FRP thing leeching onto the setup wizard) and then it boots, goes through until account sign in and then says the phone was reset... blah... blah... blah... I didn't try to log in, I don't want to make this drag out any longer, but WTF!!!!
There used to be a loophole to get out of the wizard, it's patched. Is there any way around this? I mean, tomorrow is not that much further away, I'm not trying anything risky this close to the end of the cooldown, but I highly doubt that it is going to make any difference tomorrow. It feels like a bug, I would expect that it would give some kind of warning, flag, or message that this was going to take 72 hours and there is nothing, its like a sign in bootloop... Added to that google themselves says its a sammy firmware bug, well I'm not hopeful.
Anyone else experience this? Any resolution? I will report back tomorrow one way or another, but I suspect we will be getting a new device from Verizon.
Thanks,
Jason
