[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S7 Guides, News, & Discussi] phreich:
Well, it looks like Google or Samsung (or both) have done something in the latest version of the Sprint firmware. What seems to be happening now is that an additional piece of software is loaded in the background on the phone during the initial setup process as soon as a wifi connection is established. It seems that one of the functions of that software is to add a reboot timer onto the phone, so that if the phone was previously associated with a google account, if initial setup is not completed within a short timeframe, the phone will automatically reboot from within the setup process. This is NOT a traditional boot loop, where the phone never gets to the initial setup screens. This is a timer that looks to prevent bypassing the FRP lock via alternate google signon procedures used by the ADB commands used in this bypass method.

What I found is that you have to start with a completely reset phone that has no wifi connections established before attempting to use the method documented in this thread. Even then, once the wifi connection is established, and I have used the "online" google signon to sign onto a google account, the phone restarts before I can complete all the steps needed to get to the home page. I have gotten to the very last step in the setup process, but then the phone restarts.

I will be looking into possible ways to get around this -- possibly by using a specially dedicated wifi router that I can shut off at critical steps in the process, thus preventing the loading of this extra timer software. I'll update this post with my findings.

In my case the reason I need to get past FRP locks is because I buy parts phones with damaged screens (but with clean IMEI numbers), so the owners are unable to remove their google accounts from the phone. I don't deal with blacklisted phones -- just busted ones that I can use for parts.

Google and Samsung really need to put in place a procedure to allow users to be able to remotely remove their accounts from a phone, so we repair and refurbishment folks wouldn't have to figure out ways to bypass the FRP locks for legitimate reasons. Of course, when a phone is stolen, a person would not want to remove the FRP lock -- but that's a completely different situation. Frankly I think a large part of this has to do with corporate greed. By making non-stolen FRP locked phones useless, Samsung is making millions of damaged phones that could otherwise be repaired or used for parts and put back into the market non-usable, thus keeping the demand for new phones higher.

Yes, that last bit is a grumble on my part, but I think it is part and parcel of what the manufacturers do to try do shrink the repair-and-reuse market.

Philip

UPDATE:

I have successfully gotten this method to work again!

What must now be done is, after a factory reset is done or factory firmware is installed on the phone, you must start the initial setup process and get to the "connect to wi-fi" screen, but you MUST NOT connect to wi-fi, or proceed further. Then, after the phone is rebooted, and the engineering boot is installed, the ADB commands in the batch file will work, and you will be able to login to your google account and then complete the setup. I have updated my guide to reflect this change.