A54 5G unlock issue after update

[Bobojay]

Wife's new A54. She's had it for about a month now. Did an update last night. It sounds to me like it was a Samsung OS update because she remembers it saying UI at the top of the screen at some point.

Now it won't allow her to unlock the phone to access anything. She tried several times and it now says "too many incorrect unlock attempts, try again in 2 minutes". She tries again, same result.

Any ideas on what's going on?  (By the way, she's on Consumer Cellular)

[ricketypumpkin]

Sounds to me like your wife updated to the one UI beta 6 which was a very bad move. Currently it is extremely buggy and there are lots of components of the system that don't function properly. If she saw in big letters UI in the update she probably accepted the beta they tend to have big lettering at the top and I believe the you and the U and I are in blue color typically. Well now you have an issue because you can't even find out what software she's running if she can't unlock the phone. You need to unlock too open settings. Your wife is probably going to have to factory reset the phone. I'm not in a 54 owner so I'm not sure If it is volume up plus power button and hold them until the phone shuts down and when it turns back on and you see Samsung on the screen you can let go of the power button but continue holding The volume up button or it's the opposite where you press and hold both volume down with the power button One of those two combos is going to boot you into recovery mode once you're in recovery mode unfortunately you're going to have to factory reset all data and that's towards the bottom of the list you'll see of options after performing a factory reset it may ask her for her Google account password that is the main account on her phone that's called FRP lock as long as she knows her Google account password that is the device admin of her phone or in simpler terms the Google account she signed into first when she got the phone then she will be able to erase her old lock and broken unlocking and she'll start with a clean slate like a new phone. She will be able to get and restore her Samsung account data using Smart switch so she won't permanently lose everything but she will most likely lose a good portion of random things but that's still better than having a phone that you can't use whatsoever to do anything.
If you want to skip the guessing just Google how to enter recovery mode on Galaxy a54 5G and Google will tell you if it's the volume up or volume down with the power key you'll save some time because the wrong one is going to boot you into download mode instead of recovery mode and to get out of download mode you have to hold the download mode buttons again like you're trying to go back into download mode but when the phone shuts down to try to boot back into download mode You have to let go of the volume key as soon as the screen turns black and let the phone boot normal then you know to do the opposite volume button and that will take you to recovery mode where you can start clean and get back into the phone where you can recover most likely all of her Samsung data which is calls texts contacts Wi-Fi passwords stuff like that unless she uses Google's versions of all of the communications apps like Google Messenger and Google dialer and Google contacts, then I can't guarantee any data will be restored but you will have access to the phone again to at least start fresh but I'm having a paperweight. Good luck to you and try to see if you can have your wife just let you glance at future updates to make sure she doesn't install something that's not stable because it's something that can be done easily by mistake and once you go through this process I've said you will never want to do it again it really sucks so it's worth just glancing at her phone before she accepts updates in the future

[harry2763]

You actually are correct. You may need to do a factory reset.

[ricketypumpkin]

Also doesn't matter what carrier. Carrier has nothing to do with the process you are going to have to go through. Unless the a54 has ESIM? Hopefully she has a physical SIM card then it's irrelevant but if it's an ESIM this process is going to delete that SIM card from her phone and you will have to have an extra step of calling consumer Cellular and getting them to redownload the electronic SIM card back onto the phone. I know the a 54 5G is a mid-range phone so they typically don't have ESIM yet

[ricketypumpkin]

Actually when you get into recovery mode it will tell you what software is on the phone in the background it'll be just a bunch of characters and numbers that look like they're random but they're actually the software revision that she updated to so maybe just take a picture with a different phone once you're in the main screen of recovery mode with the list of options I mentioned and take a picture of that screen and the last set of characters and numbers should be the build number which will reveal If she went to the beta or not. If she is not on the beta it is very important that you find that out before hitting factory reset because if she is not on the beta you most likely don't have to reset her phone You might get away with hitting the clear phone cache, Then hitting repair apps and The phone will do a process of repairing it's apps and eventually it will hit 100% and then reboot itself to its unlock screen and at that point hopefully her screen unlock code will actually work.

[ricketypumpkin]

If she's beta You're going to reset the phone if she's not try what I said in the post above this before resorting to resetting the whole phone, there is a chance be above method will work without having to delete all data but if it doesn't work then you have to delete all data anyway and factory reset but it is worth trying if she is not on one UI 6 beta

[Bobojay]

Thanks for the replies. What gets me is this was a Samsung instigated update, not requested by her she says so she went ahead and approved it for an overnight download at home so why would it be a beta?? since she's not enrolled or otherwise requested anything.

I know the carriers make no difference here but thought I'd mention it.

Also unfortunately she never turned on remote unlock as I told her....

To be continued

[Bobojay · Accepted solution]

Ended up having to take it to a Samsung repair center as nothing suggested above would work. They took the battery out, let it sit for some minutes, reinstalled for a hard reset, then start as new.

Working fine now, and by the way, the repair center tech said he's seen this before albeit very seldom, but it was just some kind of glitch and not upgraded to UI 6. The "repair" was on Samsung warranty. 

Thanks for all the suggestions...