My Pixel 8a has been locked for over a month, and I didn’t back up my 2025 media. I’m currently sitting at a 1.4-million-second lockout. Completely absurd.
Out of nowhere, my phone disabled my fingerprint (without a restart) and suddenly demanded my pattern — the same pattern I’ve used for two years. I’m 100% certain I’m entering it correctly, but it simply won’t accept it.
At first, I waited out the lockouts, but nothing changed. Then I started rebooting and using that one “first-attempt after restart” pattern prompt. But I still don’t know if I’m wasting my time, because I suspect that what looks like a fresh attempt after reboot is actually auto-rejected behind the scenes due to the ongoing lockout, even if the pattern is correct.
I even went as far as generating every possible variation of my pattern using AI — easily 300 different permutations. None worked. Again, this is a pattern I’ve used daily for two years. At this point it feels like the authentication system is corrupted.
My fingerprint had always worked flawlessly. And my Google account’s “Find My Device” can locate the phone instantly. But it offers no way to reset or override the pattern from the backend. The only options available are locking it remotely, making it ring, or wiping it via a factory reset — nothing that helps recover access.
Extremely frustrating. Unless I’m mistaken, iPhones have backend recovery mechanisms for situations like this. I’m genuinely shocked that I can’t regain access to my own device, even while logged into the same Google account I purchased and set it up with.