New (to me) iPhone 6 thinks my password is wrong

January 14, 2019 6:46 PM

I bought an iPhone 6 from a friend 3 days ago. It thinks I'm entering the wrong password but I'm not. WTF?

I went to the phone store (Rogers) for help setting it up as I'm a total newb. They connected both phones to their wifi and most of the setup finished. When I got home I connected both to my wifi and the set up completed. All was good. I entered my Apple password successfully. I was able to make calls, listen to podcasts, play a game. The usual.

This morning the battery ran out and I didn't realize, so I kept tapping the screen to try to wake it up. Eventually it woke up enough to tell me I had to charge the battery, which I did tonight.

Since it finished charging, I haven't been able to use it. Whenever I enter the password, it tells me the phone is disabled and I have to wait. The first time was 1 minute, next 5 minutes, then 15 minutes. The password I've entered is correct.

Did it revert to wanting my friend's password somehow? I'm afraid to enter my password again and have it lock me out for eternity.

All the solutions I've seen online say I have to sync it to iTunes, but they also say I have to have done so before, which I haven't.

Some solutions warn they will wipe my data. I don't even know what my data is or whether I care. Podcasts? Contacts? Emails? Notes? I think that stuff is still on my old phone, right? Can I just re-do the setup with my old phone again if I wipe the data?

Can I just put the SIM card back in my old phone and use it as normal, or is my account now linked to the new, screwed up phone?

I'm traveling in three days and will need a phone. What should I do?

posted by Frenchy67 to Technology (8 answers total)

Sorry, can't help with most of your questions, but:

Can I just put the SIM card back in my old phone and use it as normal, or is my account now linked to the new, screwed up phone?

Yes, your phone account is linked to the SIM, not the phone.
posted by pompomtom at 6:49 PM on January 14, 2019

You should wipe the phone using these instructions: If you forgot the passcode for your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, or your device is disabled. You will need iTunes.

Are you getting the password to the phone and the password to your Apple account confused? They are not necessarily the same thing.

This morning the battery ran out and I didn't realize, so I kept tapping the screen to try to wake it up.
iPhones don't wake up when you tap the screen. It seems possible that you have added a password somehow.

Do you still have your old phone? There isn't any reason why the data on it would be lost.
posted by meowzilla at 7:17 PM on January 14, 2019

You’re sure you’re not mixing up your passcode that you need to access the phone with the password for your Apple account? They’d be different. The passcode is usually short while the Apple account password has a lot of security requirements.
posted by sleeping bear at 7:43 PM on January 14, 2019

I once had a problem with my iPhone 5 when it was plugged into a battery charger - I think because the frequency was different, my touches weren't mapping to the numbers on the screen. I unplugged it and it worked normally. Might be a possibility?
posted by sagwalla at 3:02 AM on January 15, 2019

My iPhone and iPad work fine inside my house with my Wifi but if I take them to my office which is exactly nextdoor (one foot apart) and has a Wifi extender connected to the house Wifi - half the time it will say "not correct Wifi password". In other words Apple products don't like my Wifi extender. My surface pro and my Kindle Fire have never done that.

I think you should go back to the phone store since it seemed to work fine with their Wifi. See if you can log in.
posted by cda at 5:36 AM on January 15, 2019

Yeah, take note of the difference between your Apple password and a device passcode. I'm wondering if the issue might be that your new iPhone is set up to require a passcode after restart (which, of course, includes running out of battery, charging, then turning on). If you did not do a complete wipe before, you might check if your friend had a passcode on the device and try that one. Otherwise, you're probably looking at a complete wipe and transfer the data from your old phone again.
posted by yuwtze at 7:06 AM on January 15, 2019

What yuwtze said. However, I'm not sure how you managed to do this setup without knowingly entering a password. Maybe your friend didn't properly erase the phone so it still has his password in there? You would have been prompted for the password at least once while setting up things like Touch ID though.

Last I checked, you can always bypass the password by erasing the phone in iTunes and starting over. You should still be able to re-transfer things from your old phone.

(true story: one time I "lost" my password because I'd forgotten there was a capital letter in it. After nuking the phone, I managed to remember this while typing my Apple account password to restore from backup. Doh!)
posted by neckro23 at 2:29 PM on January 15, 2019

You saved my butt meowzilla!

I definitely had the right password; it's the same as the one for my old phone and nothing like my Apple password.

I think what happened is that the phone was set to wake up when I pick it up, without pushing a button. I think I was probably touching it in my pocket, which it interpreted as me trying to enter a password. I've turned off that function and everything seems to be working.

Thank you all so much!
posted by Frenchy67 at 6:04 PM on January 15, 2019