[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] roboshawn:
TL;DR; I'm locked out of my phone by Android Device Manager and typing the password in that I gave it is not working using the virtual keyboard. I'm going to try a physical keyboard next as per (http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2767278) ...

I wanted to share my experience up until this point. And if the physical keyboard doesn't work continue sharing. And perhaps someone else would have a miracle answer.

The story (sorry this is long - hence the TL;DR; at top) :

I had the swipe touch password enabled. My daughter was playing with my phone for some time until it deactivated the swipe-touch password and started asking for a PIN. This is when she handed it to me. My first reaction was "oh no - I don't remember this" But, I gave a few numbers some tries that I thought might work. I failed ... Then I began research on the internet. I saw something about incorrect guesses after 5 times would reveal a way to enter username/password associated with my gmail. So, I failed a couple more times, but never saw this option.

Then I found "Android Device Manager". I thought I was in luck so I quickly checked my google account and found out that I could ring my phone and the option for "Lock" was also available so I quickly locked it ... and my phone updated ... and I tried to unlock it ... and my phone tells me that it was the wrong password. What the what?! I tried again ... and again ... and again ... failing repeatedly. Why doesn't this work? Isn't this feature here to keep unfortunate people like me from getting permanently locked out of my phone or resorting to factory resets? (Ok, sure - this feature is also here to lock out thieves and help find lost phones ... but come on - it should work for this situation too!) Anyhow, at this point, sure, if I had already backed everything up or had Google+ auto-backup installed I would just delete/restore my phone, but I have photos on here that aren't backed up and I don't want to lose. I also found that if I had my phone registered with a Samsung account I could just unlock it ... but alas ... I don't have a Samsung account ... so ...

Somewhere in here I contacted Samsung and they told me they couldn't do anything and to attempt getting help from my provider - inferring that I could verify with Verizon that I am the owner of the phone and they could unlock it. So ... I called Verizon and even went to their physical store location in town and no one was able to help. They all were searching the same web-search results I was finding and suggesting things that I'd already tried. This seems kind of ridiculous to me ... I pay them the money for their services and they don't have a magical machine to help me out with this kind of thing? (Benefit of the doubt - perhaps they don't have a magical machine so that employees at Verizon can't steal phones and strip out the data themselves?) Speaking of magical machines - I did happen upon mobiletechvideos guys and was curious about them ... but I'm trying to do this without paying $30-125 and shipping my phone off if I can avoid it.

So ... I began researching other options ... reading that it is unfortunate that I don't have USB Debugging enabled ... moved on to Heimdall / Odin / JOdin3 - etc (recovery tutorial I found)... I tried flashing my recovery image ... fail ... I compiled my own versions of Heimdall with newer code even because I read that the current release version has some issues ... fail again ... oh, not a Heimdall/Odin problem - it is because of a Verizon lock on bootloader(?) ... and/or b/c I never rooted my phone(?) ... So I began researching more ... it looks like having a Verizon version of this phone makes it even more difficult. So I stopped trying this recovery image flash option and pondered what else I could try.

Then, I had an epiphany "why can't I just restore to factory and THEN use some kind of file recovery program?" BAM! How about that - there's tons of these recovery programs on the internet. BUT, I didn't want to do this to my own phone in case it failed. So, luckily, my wife has the same phone. I backed up all her data, delete/reset to factory defaults, 7 taps to the build number activating dev mode and then activating USB Debug mode, and then tried a number of these recovery programs. NONE of them succeeded. They all appear to have trouble finding and connecting to the phone. Myjad seems to get the farthest in that it appears connected to the phone, but then tells me "activate USB Debugging" and then tells me I don't have it active, but I do! Why isn't it working? Do these recovery programs only work on rooted devices? MTP/PTP don't work? Or perhaps our Android versions are too new? So I'm still stuck on these questions for this ...

This is where I am with this. I just read that perhaps I have to type the Android Device Manager password in with an external keyboard for the Android Device Manager password to work. I'm going to try that.

If that doesn't work I think I'm going to start researching a method that involves rooting the phone without delete/reset? Then perhaps I can try a recovery img flash, but I don't think this is looking promising given the Verizon lock on bootloader? So then I might try the root/delete/reset + recovery program ... perhaps a recovery program will be more flexible on a rooted phone? But, considering I have not rooted before, if this is where I end up with this - I will be asking questions about how to go about that - because it looks like it is particularly tricky with this Verizon S4 ...

If you made it this far - thanks for reading! And thanks in advance if you have some ideas.

TL;DR; (copied from top) I'm locked out of my phone by Android Device Manager and typing the password in that I gave it is not working using the virtual keyboard. I'm going to try a physical keyboard next as per (http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2767278) ...