There is nothing more frustrating than having to setup a phone after a fresh factory data reset. It usually involves countless hours of downloading and reinstalling apps, logging in, setting up your home-screen and getting your settings exactly the way you want them. It can be mundane, annoying, and a complete time suck.
That’s why we felt it necessary to warn you about a new feature on the all new HTC One M8 that might sneak up on you one day and make your life a living hell. If you input your lock-screen pattern or password incorrectly 10 consecutive times, the phone will proceed to automatically wipe all your data as if you’d done a factory reset from the settings menu.
Need proof? Resident masochist Rob Jackson did the deed on video, showing you the unfortunate result of being a forgetful person. The phone doesn’t give you any chance to reverse the action once you’ve reached that point, so if you’ve forgotten your pattern you’ll want to think long and hard each time you make an attempt, as there’ll be no turning back if you can’t successfully get in.
There’s no setting to disable this behavior from what we can tell, which leaves it open to potential abuse. Perhaps a scorned loved one is upset with you and wants to do something to make you mad. Maybe your children want to play Angry Birds and they are repeatedly failing to input your password. These scenarios and many more could definitely spell trouble to even the most careful users.
Unfortunately, a factory reset on the HTC One M8 includes a complete wipe of personal media from the phone’s internal storage. This means you’ll lose your photos and videos if they weren’t stored on the microSD card the phone thankfully supports. There are a couple of different things you can do to make sure this isn’t a problem for you in the foreseeable future:
- Set your default storage to microSD for your photos, videos and downloads if you have one.
- Use Google Drive, DropBox, or another backup service to backup all your important files.
Beyond that, just be careful and make sure you choose passwords and patterns that you’ll be sure to remember for a long time coming, and think about temporarily disabling lock-screen security if you expect your children or loved ones to be using your phone for an extended period of time.
Be sure to watch the video above if you’re curious to see how it happens in motion. PS: don’t forget that tomorrow is April Fool’s day, so make sure to keep your phone away from your prankster friends and avoid having this happen to you!
[via AndroidForums.com, thanks Dwight!]
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