Your Galaxy phone will be permanently locked if you enter the incorrect PIN thirteen times. – With the release of One UI 9, which is based on Android 17, Samsung is making it considerably more difficult to crack the lock screen on Galaxy devices. The phone will cease accepting tries if you enter the incorrect PIN, pattern, or password thirteen times. The only way to use it again will be to perform a complete factory reset.
The modification is intended to prevent brute-force attacks, in which a password is guessed repeatedly until one is successful. Compared to previous iterations of One UI, which primarily relied on brief waiting times rather than a required ultimate lockout, this is a significant change.
In what ways does One UI 9.0 modify unsuccessful unlock attempts?
Entering the incorrect PIN only resulted in higher wait times on earlier iterations of the One UI. Users might attempt again without a permanent limit when the countdown expired. Although it required manual activation, Samsung did provide an extra feature that wiped the phone after 15 unsuccessful attempts.
The last lockout is required with One UI 9.0. The phone prevents fresh entries for a minute after five unsuccessful attempts. After every failure, the delay lengthens, reaching 90 minutes after nine tries, four hours after ten, twelve hours after eleven, and twenty-four hours after twelve. The phone is permanently locked if an incorrect entry is made on the thirteenth attempt. A factory reset, which removes all locally saved data, is the only way to use it once more.
Samsung will present alerts and the number of attempts left. Additionally, Smart Counting is being added, so entering the same wrong PIN twice in a row counts as one failure rather than two. This should lessen unintentional lockouts brought on by kids pushing the same numbers or repeatedly tapping their pockets.
Is Samsung going too far with the lockout policy?
Some customers are concerned that kids might lock the phone by repeatedly entering random digits. Because each timeout must end before a new password can be entered, it would actually take more than 42 hours to reach the final try. Long before it got to that stage, the owner would also get multiple warnings. For anyone who actually forgets a password, the repercussions are still severe.
This risk is not eliminated by fingerprint and facial unlocking. Samsung is unable to remotely retrieve the backup credential, and Android still needs it at least once every 72 hours. As a result, regular backups will be even more crucial for devices that come with One UI 9.
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