Sold a locked phone, any work around.

[Jamilton]

Hi.

So today I bought a Sony Xperia E5 from the Uk store Cash Converters.

The phone was sold to me as in 'working condition' with 'no warranty'.

Long story short, the phone is still passworded by its previous owner, and i'll assume that the account is still linked with it. Cash Converters wont refund me my money back as the phone has 'no warranty' even though I walked back in 20 minutes after purchasing it with a recipt, and they told me there was nothing wrong with the phone.

Is there anyway to reset the phone to its basic state so I can set it up and link it to my own account? Or am i stuck with a £50 paperweight.

Thanks.

[Jonas]

Hi @Jamilton, very sorry to hear about this.

If the previous owner did not have a Google account in the phone and there is only a screen lock set on the phone, you can perform a software repair using Xperia Companion.

This will delete all data stored on the internal storage of the phone and in the same process, remove any screen lock on the phone.

However, if the previous owner added a Google account, you will need these credentials to unlock the Google Device Protection on the phone and add your own Google account.

To remove this lock, the phone will need to be sent to an authorized service centre. As this is a Global forum and service cases are handled at a local level, please get in touch with your Local support team and they will be able to assist you further with this.

Let me know if that helps!