Locked Out Of Perfectly Nice Working Phone.

[sens_]

Hi,
A friend of mine needed a new phone. He liked my redmi 3 pro, so he ordered a redmi 3s.

He's the kind of guy who can repair/fix/build your car, kitchen, bike, house. whatever. A real handyman.
...But don't ask him to fix your computer or smartphone....

Anyway he recieved the device, fiddled around with it to a point that he messed up so bad that he now
has a fingerprint scanner that doesn't recognize his finger and a unlocking code he doesn't remember.

( yes, really ! )

...basically locking him out of the phone !

How can i help him ?

The phone has :
- no active mi account registered in the device. ( made one afterwards on my request )
- usb debugging, developer etc. all off, so no fastboot flash ( tried it )
- therefore no edl-mode ? (tried it )
- A working gmail account on his name. ( that's all he did )

So i've read a few possible solutions such as maybe opening the device and connecting the test points, as shown here : oops can't post url's since i re-registered.
and/or buy a "deepflash cable "? i have read that somewhere.


Do any of you maybe have a fix for me that doesn't involve opening up the device?
( assuming that would even work )

Thanks ! !

 

[MarkyO]

Power off the phone. Then press Vol+ and keep pressed and push power button to power on. You'll be prompted a menu in chinese letters from where you can access fastboot and recovery (written in english). Probably there's a way to factory reset the device, but I can't read chinese.

 

[sens_]

Thank's for your reply , but i've tried that. I can get into fastboot, but can't flash a fastboot rom, since dev options and usb debugging are not turned on, and there isn't a way for me to turn it on since i can't acces the device settings.
Booting into recovery leaves a black screen with no interaction on a connected pc.

 

[MarkyO]

Then you should find someone who can read chinese.

 

[the_fox]

Google translate to the rescue, the option in the menu are:
Light Board test
Machine test - Audio test
Sensor test
Hardware information
Fastboot - Recovery
Download - Chinese (you might wanna press this one, it might get you into the english menu Haven't tried it, using my phone right now so I'm not gonna boot into this menu to test it myself...)
Shutdown

At the bottom are the test flags for the above tests...

So, you're gonna need to get into recovery, edl or fastboot mode to fix it, no way of doing a hard reset here...
I have TWRP on mine, so I can't really help you with stock recovery mode options.

 

[MarkyO]

You're able to boot into fastboot mode? So what about firing up the command
fastboot erase userdata ?
Be aware that all data will be lost, if this works.

 

[Geephile]

...
Chinese (you might wanna press this one, it might get you into the english menu Haven't tried it, using my phone right now so I'm not gonna boot into this menu to test it myself...)

Yup its totally logical to put the word english in chinese to get the english menu.
(And after pressing it it wil say "Chinese" in english

 

[sens_]

You're able to boot into fastboot mode? So what about firing up the command
fastboot erase userdata ?
Be aware that all data will be lost, if this works.

First of all to all replyers, thanks but the chinese language is not the problem.

As to MarkyO :

Let's assume that this would work, isn't it so that i than still have no way of installing twrp ?
The device is brand-new, so still with locked bootloader, and perfectly nice rom.
if i try this and fail, i'm even more stuck than i already am.

- the command fastboot devices shows my device, with is in fastboot mode.

Is there a fastboot command to reset the device ? back to factory setting ?

what to do, what to do.......

 

[sens_]

You're able to boot into fastboot mode? So what about firing up the command
fastboot erase userdata ?
Be aware that all data will be lost, if this works.

well, i tried ......

 

[MarkyO]

Tapping "download" in the chinese menu should boot your device in edl mode. Then you should be able to use Miflash to flash any official ROM. This will wipe everything.

 

[sens_]

Tried that again, ( booting vol+ power, then selecting download in menu )

Unfortunately this results in a normal boot, back to the normal ( locked ) system.
Meantime i was constanly refreshing miflash to see if the device is visible. Nothing......

I've tried a couple ways to get into edl download mode, nothing.
Sofar, only the fastboot option makes some sort of connection as shown in cmd in previous post......

 

[MarkyO]

What about
fastboot reboot-bootloader ?

 

[egold70]

What about
fastboot reboot-bootloader ?

This will bring you back to fastboot mode, no use since locked BL
AFAIK you cannot help in this situation: no EDL without usb debugging(deep flash cable is also of no use), no fastboot access with locked device and locked system...
The proper solution would be service center if any available near you

 

[MarkyO]

Read post #20 in this thread:
http://en.miui.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=384702&extra=page=1&mobile=2

 

[Eninshi]

Nyou tried this one to enter download mode?..
http://en.miui.com/thread-384989-1-1.html

 

[Orelphone.com]

Assuming it's really your device, you just have to log in your mi cloud account and in locate device, you can Wipe the device

 

[the_fox]

First post, no active mi account on the device...

 

[Orelphone.com]

Well you can do wipe also from Android Device Manager...
Dont tell me that the device doesn't have google account set.