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Comment by londons_explore | Hacker News Reader

Your android phone will continue to work as-if-offline if your account is banned. You can still do calls/sms and browse the web, but all google apps won't work until you create a new gmail account (and obviously you'll lose all your data).

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Question: Assuming you have a modern android phone like samsung galaxy S20. When you factory reset your phone you need to log in with your google account to use it. This prevents people from stealing your phone.

How does this work when your account has been banned? Is my phone a brick afterwards? Someone should try this out.

Your phone is only a brick if your account is banned at the same time as you reset your phone. Either alone won't brick your phone.

Some might see Occham's razor in this, but I could imagine this being a real edge case:

When I had an Android (OnePlus) device I often factory reset when tinkering with it, go to bed and continue whatever I wanted to do on the next day. Of course my phone had it's bootloader unlocked and TWRP recovery, since I was trying to get lineageOS + spoofed signatures + microG to work.

So basically the scenario is: factory reset your phone, go to bed, wake up with banned google account, have a new brick decor for your garden.

Would be funny if they didn't think of this possibility.

So, you're supposed to avoid doing factory reset on a phone once your account is banned? Sounds like an essential feature being held hostage.

No - you can always remove the google account from the phone, or add a different one, before resetting it.

From memory you use your Samsung account for that feature.

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