Help Lock Screen Woes: Spontaneously Switching from Pin to Password

[Peacenote]

Hello!

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated, as I'm four wrong passwords away from having to completely set up my phone again for the second time.

Issue: After ~ a day of using my Galaxy S4 Mini, the lock screen spontaneously switches from pin input to password input (although it graciously lets me choose between the Swype and Samsung Keyboard) and will not accept my pin as a valid password. This is the second time this has happened after a complete factory reinstall. My phone is not rooted. I believe I have some flavor of KitKat although of course I can't log in to check.

• I have tried booting in safe mode. Still the keyboard password screen shows, still the phone won't take my pin. This leads me to believe it isn't a 3rd party app issue, but who knows.
• The app people keep mentioning (Screen Lock Bypass Pro https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.thomascannon.screenlockbypass.pro&hl=en) is not compatible with my device.
• While I am able to send a new password to it through Android Device Manager, this does not seem to work. I get the black screen with the lock, and when I hit the back button to input the new password it still says wrong password. This may have something to do with the fact that every time I try to send a lock to the phone, while it sends it, it also gives me this error message: "Your new password was not strong enough. Your device has the following password requirements: NaN - 16 characters long"

Has this happened to anyone else? Anyone know how to force the phone back into pin mode? I use Android because I customize heavily and rely on a variety of apps, but I've been using the same ones for a long time and I've never had this issue before. I also have yet to find a backup app the perfectly restores all of my settings, so I really don't want to erase and start all over...again! I am having trouble searching the web for this issue because all I find are people trying to bypass their lock screen.

Here is a picture of my installed apps: http://tinypic.com/r/24vmo3b/8. Likely 3rd party culprits are Nova Launcher, App Protector Pro, or No Lock Screen if anyone uses any of those. But again, the phone works great for about a day with all the apps installed before this starts happening.

Thanks very much for any suggestions!

-Peacenote

 

[Hadron]

To be honest I've never heard of this before.

The problem still being there in safe mode doesn't prove it isn't a 3rd party app. If an app had changed the system settings they would still be changed when booting in safe mode.

I think you can scratch Nova Launcher from your list of suspects, as it had nothing to do with lockscreen or security settings and many people, including myself, use it without such problems.

I've never tried changing password by Android device manager, but that message certainly says to me that it has not set a password. Have you tried setting one that complies with what it is saying: Not a Number (NaN), 16 characters? Though 16 characters seems very long if that is a requirement rather than a maximum!

 

[Peacenote]

Thanks for responding! I have tried pretty much every permutation for the password that I can think of (higher than 16, lower than 16, exactly 16, with and without numbers...) but I could try again.

Yea I've been using Nova, App Protector Pro, and No Lock Screen successfully for years on both my S3 and S3 Mini so I would be bummed if any of those apps were causing the issue.

 

[Peacenote]

Hi again,

Just as a follow up in case my research helps anyone else.

I finally gave up and let the phone go back to factory settings. "I'm not getting burned by this again," I thought. I set it so that 10 wrong passwords didn't reset the phone, and I went with a regular password instead of a pin.

Apparently, the password-to-pin screen was somewhat of a red herring, because after a period of using my phone, I got locked out again even with a full password. Really?? Really?? In a fix that appeared to be brute force more than anything else, after entering my password a bunch of times, it was finally accepted and I didn't have an issue for about a week. But now, today, I got locked out again. To top it off, I have 10 text messages that I can't read because I can't log in!!

So, back to searching online for solutions. I found:

http://www.galaxys4forums.net/forum/12-galaxy-s4-help/2643-unlock-pin-problems.html

http://forums.androidcentral.com/google-nexus-7-tablet-2013/359215-pin-auto-reset-itself-print.html

which also led to: http://benhirashima.com/skiplock/faq/

Conclusions:

• This is an issue that occurs on Samsung S3 & S4 devices (including minis based on my experience)
• It potentially is an issue with the Samsung ROM (and therefore not related to a specific 3rd party app)
  
• Fixes for others (that I've tried without success) include: removing the battery for a few minutes, switching keyboard inputs, using Android Device Manager to send a new password, using Samsung's method to remove the lock screen password
• Fix that sometimes works for me: Wait a while and try again. I have had this work twice, but so far I can't get in tonight.

At this point, I'm beyond frustrated. My phone contract is up in May, and I was considering the S6, but how do I know for sure the issue doesn't pass to more current Samsung models? I am a fan of Samsung due to the fact that they continue to allow SD cards, which gives me a degree of control over my device that isn't allowed from other vendors, but I can't keep crossing my fingers every time I try to log in. Not having a lock screen isn't an option IMO either. Any information regarding similar experiences, models, and potential solutions would be welcomed.

I suspect that this is a keyboard issue, and using a pattern unlock will work properly. I am not sure my patience extends to performing a factory reset AGAIN and seeing if pattern unlock works. But again other experiences would be welcomed to assist with an informed decision.

I like the flexibility of the android platform but this is beyond ridiculous. Here's wishing that some of the other solutions that did not work for me will help someone else!

-Peacenote