This hit me the other day. I dropped my phone and smashed both the screen and display making it essentially unusable. I needed to get into my email. I had no WiFi but I had access to an older phone with data. Tried to sign in on the other phone. It said I needed to confirm the login on my device, I obviously could not, it gave me an option saying 'can't access phone' so I clicked it, it took me to a page saying too bad sorry no signing in for you and that was it, I was locked out of email until I bought a new phone and set it up.