[Galaxy S 5 Android Development (Snapdragon)] johan81:
Reactivation lock problem!

First of all, I want to respond to people saying getting dealt the reactivation lock issue is your own fault of getting into this very very annoying problem.

At first I tended to agree to them, but in the end, it isn't really the user's fault at all. The biggest issue is, it should just work, but when you haven't installed certain add-on's, it doesn't and leaves you with a very problematic situation since you cannot use any custom recovery until you get it sorted. If you would flash a 100% fully bloated stock ROM, you would never run into this situation as you will be taken through all the right steps to get it working properly and you will be able to disable it normally.

With all that said, it is better to not use the setting at all and you will be better off not enabling it, though it could be something you like using, there are ways to circumvent it which kinda makes it useless, so it is better to ignore it and leave it off!

I think it would be a good idea, if possible, to remove this option in the ROM by edgarf28 completely if at all possible, that would be a very good way to help people to prevent to run into this very annoying and hard to get rid off problem.

Before you continue, please read my instructions carefully and follow them patiently, I know it is a bit of a stressed out situation, but to solve it you really need to follow the order of the steps accurately! When you failed, try the last step by doing another factory reset and first manually add the account again.

Now to get to how I got rid of it, I am pretty sure these are the steps I took to get rid of it, but am not a 100% sure and will, for obvious reasons, I will not try and repeat the process to confirm myself.

-If you have turned on the reactivation lock and do not see that option in "security" in "settings" then you are in a bit of a pickle! At that time, you need to flash the stock ROM from here: http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=60166729&postcount=3844

When flashed, you will need to go into recovery (which should work now, since it will be stock recovery after flashing this ROM) and do a factory reset.

-Create a Samsung account on a device (any other than your S5, like a computer, tablet, etc.).

-After that, just go through the complete process of activating your S5 and when asked, use the Samsung account you just created when asked for it and your phone will be accessible and you will be able to see the "reactivation lock" option under "security" in "settings", though when you try to disable it, you will see (even after logging in on the Samsung account you just used to activate the phone) it will enable itself again right away.

-Now go to "accounts" in settings and remove the Samsung account you added at initialization. Here is where I am not a 100% sure what I did, I think I went to the "reactivation lock" setting and tried to disable it which then automatically led me to adding the Samsung account (use the same as before!) again or I might have first added the account manually again, but I am pretty sure it isn't the latter. After you have done that, it was disabled and I flashed my custom recovery again and it finally worked!

If you have solved your problem and know which way (either by being led to adding the account because of trying to disable the "reactivation lock" setting or by manually adding the account after first having it removed).

Now I had some people telling me to just flash root again, that only helps to get you back into the phone, but doesn't remove the problem of not being able to get into custom recovery or being unable of disabling the reactivation lock.