Postby maj. tom » October 18th, 2020, 11:46 am
There is no other way but to factory reset the phone. As extra security to protect your data, they removed the regular reset PIN method through your Google Account in Android 5 and up. So if you forgot your PIN, factory reset through the "Find my Phone" feature in your Google or Samsung account. Your Google account data will be restored when you set up the phone again. Merely wiping the data and cache in hard recovery mode is useless because all your data on the phone is encrypted at the chip level with the PIN. So you will still be locked out and have no access to your data that was stored on the device. You have to factory reset.
Even if you have a Smart Unlock feature with a Trusted Place set, like inside your car, you still don't know the new PIN, so you have to factory reset. Next time you set up your phone, set up the Google Photos app to automatically backup your photos and videos to the cloud. Your messaging apps will also have a backup feature that you should enable.
Lastly, NEVER share your PIN with anybody, no matter how much you trust them or love them or whatever, not even your dog. NEVER! Because headaches like this happen.
