Pixel 6a pin code amnesia.

anarchosax

de0u What I think is interesting, and why I tend not to think that this is a carrier or physical (phone) issue, is that from the moment that I saw a system update was available, until the phone was updated and refusing the pin code for my sim card, the phone did not leave my hands, nor did I move around, walking from one location to another. I first put the phone on a table when I saw that I would again need to swap the sim card from one phone to another. Immediately after that I had swapped to the other phone, the pin code was working...

futrobugne

other8026 that would not be a correct statement.

Almost 9 days ago, I reported a similar issue on my Pixel 7pro, where the phone/GOS stopped accepting my PIN (which in my opinion was correct) after a preconfigured auto-reboot. I had to reset my GOS installation to fix the issue.

More details here.
https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/10703-phone-does-not-accept-pin/

If it is happening with multiple users, could it be a software issue?

de0u

futrobugne Almost 9 days ago, I reported a similar issue on my Pixel 7pro, where the phone/GOS stopped accepting my PIN (which in my opinion was correct) after a preconfigured auto-reboot.

While these issues sound similar, there are multiple differences as well. I believe SIM PINs are stored on each SIM and checked by the SIM (i.e., there isn't a way for the OS to read out the SIM to compare it to what a user enters). The owner-profile PIN, and also secondary-profile PINS, are stored by the trusted element and checked by it. So the majority of the two PIN-checking systems is different -- it's mostly not one thing.

futrobugne If it is happening with multiple users, could it be a software issue?

If it were experienced by 30% or 15% or 5% of users, that would cast a lot of suspicion on software. In the other direction, if it were experienced by .0001% of users, that would seem potentially more like a hardware problem -- because when there are millions of Pixels out there, on any given day some of them still will start doing something weird because of some hardware issue. In between 5% and .0001% it's hard to say!

If there are 100,000(?) GrapheneOS users, and 10 experience something strange, and 2 or 3 of them report it here...10/100,000 would be one user in 10,000, I think, which would be .01%? It's late so I probably shouldn't be doing arithmetic. But two or three reports here of the same phenomenon do not constitute a smoking gun for a software flaw.

Even if the two or three reports here are "right after an update", note that updates force a reboot, and most phones don't reboot a lot between updates, so "right after an update" may not mean anything beyond "right after a reboot", and lots of hardware problems can hide for a while and show up during a reboot.

Bugs do occur in GrapheneOS. A couple times a year a release is yanked after the alpha stage because some alpha-release users report a bug. But meanwhile the numbers suggest that every release (meaning mass reboot of the fleet) will trigger a latent hardware issue in some phones.

futrobugne

Here is another user with a similar PIN issue around the same time I.e 8. days ago. Just saying, its not an uncommon issue. https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/10707-wrong-pin-error-after-enabling-multiple-users/

anarchosax

de0u I think what is lost in this overview that you have presented, is that regardless the number of users experiencing this, the assumption is that people using GrapheneOS are attempting to achieve greater security. While the phone has not been bricked and the situation can be addressed by reverting to standard Android, the phone may as well have been bricked, as users experiencing this are forced to return to a less secure system, which is an unsatisfactory state of affairs for those users. Nonetheless, that is my current alternative, as a phone that is in reality unusable is not worth anything.

de0u

anarchosax While the phone has not been bricked and the situation can be addressed by reverting to standard Android, the phone may as well have been bricked, as users experiencing this are forced to return to a less secure system, which is an unsatisfactory state of affairs for those users.

I agree that one's phone suddenly refusing to unlock is quite unsatisfactory. But attributing such a situation to a software problem -- let alone a problem in GrapheneOS -- is far from straightforward.

What if whatever has gone wrong also happens occasionally to users of Google's OS?

This piece includes directions for a Samsung phone:

https://support.google.com/pixelphone/thread/219226263/phone-won-t-accept-lock-screen-pin-password?hl=en

Here's a report from a user of a Xiaomi phone:

https://c.mi.com/us/thread-2484485-1-0.html

Sometimes phone hardware does the wrong thing. Sometimes phone software does the wrong thing. When something goes wrong it may not be crystal clear what the cause was.

anarchosax

de0u I would suggest that we keep this thread open. I will revert to Android and post from time to time regarding whether things continue to function without problems on Android, or whether I experience the same problem on a Google vanilla ROM. It will also provide you with the only opportunity to find out if it is a hardware issue or not…

anarchosax

OK, let's just close this thread. I have gotten so tired of futzing around with this, that I returned the phone and got my money back. At this point, I don't care whether it was the hardware or the software. It was just a frustrating experience, that I want to put behind me.

de0u

anarchosax I'm sorry it didn't work out. Perhaps down the road it will make sense to try again with another device. Regardless, best wishes for a secure and private on-line existence.

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