Nexus 7 locked out with no Wi-Fi.

[ambrown]

Hey all, I'm on vacation and my nephew got locked out of his Nexus 7 tablet. A bunch of the cousins were messing around with the thing and got it locked out by too many pattern attempts. But it's also not connected to Wi-Fi either. I can access his gmail account so we know the email and password are correct, but what use is that when it's not connected to Wi-Fi? I tired enabling Wi-Fi so we could unlock it but if coarse that doesn't work.

So is there any workaround other than a hard reset? My nephew's dad isn't here and I'd hate to just reset the thing even if my nephew doesn't mind downloading all his apps again. His dad, my brother-in-law, may not appreciate me hard resetting the thing if he doesn't understand why. I guess if worse comes to worse and he has to have his tablet working if just to keep his grandparents sane on the trip home (they're driving four hours to get home in a couple of days). Any thoughts?

 

[dezymond]

Don't think there is any way around it, especially since wifi is off. FDR may be the only way to go.

 

[ambrown]

Well ended up just having him not use it. We really tried everything we could think of. Luckily the Wi-Fi was on, just not connected to that network. So we told him to just put the tablet away and turn it on when he got home and then log into his Google account. Welp, sure enough he got home, turned it on and logged in with no trouble since it automatically connected to his home network.

This is a serious flaw on Google's part though! They absolutely need to have the ability to at least connect to Wi-Fi from a locked out screen. They can make it temporary or allow a quick one time connection just for authentication purposes for all I care. But locking out without a connection pretty much ensures you won't be using the tablet away from home until you 1) return to a saved Wi-Fi connection, or 2) factory reset it (which I found out can only be done from a PC, once it's locked out, through ADB).

I mean really, this is as bad as Apple locking an iPod Touch for 42 years (as seen here, and is apparently a common problem with the iPods: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4203576?start=0&tstart=0). This is just an extremely bad flaw.

 

[dezymond]

Glad to hear it was resolved, but that kid must've been bored lol

I agree that they should allow it, but it is a preventive measure in case the tablet is stolen. Maybe it's something they'll fix with 4.3, but for now, it is what it is.

 

[ambrown]

Glad to hear it was resolved, but that kid must've been bored lol

I agree that they should allow it, but it is a preventive measure in case the tablet is stolen. Maybe it's something they'll fix with 4.3, but for now, it is what it is.

Well I get the security concern. But I'm just saying that they should have the ability to set up a temporary Wi-Fi connection from the lockscreen to authenticate. Besides if someone stole a tablet, and they were actually smart about it, they would factory reset to sell it off anyway. Most thieves aren't going to try and get info off a locked tablet. They want to make money off it as fast and easily as possible. So it would make sense to at least allow a temporary connection, or something just so you could actually recover the thing while not connected to a known network. If I had this happen to me on a business trip I'd be out the tablet until I got home, or decided to factory reset and wipe everything and start from scratch.

Granted, you do have to get locked out first. And the chances of me doing this myself are slim. But you never know. I have two kids that are old enough to unlock a lockscreen, but not old enough to know when to stop if they don't get the right pattern after several tries. So I could see this totally happening to me at some point in the future.

I'm glad I'm aware of this issue now so I can take preventative measures, but even that won't keep this from happening 100% of the time.