After 5 incorrect tries, my phone makes makes me wait 30 seconds. If someone tries to brute-force even a simple 4 dot pattern, 1624 combinations would take at least 3 hours of waiting alone, plus the time to input the patterns and check the list of patterns. This is of course assuming the 30 second wait doesn't increase and there is no max number of incorrect tries before the phone requires a pin. I should be able to notice my phone is missing and perform a remote wipe before someone can guess my pattern.

Unless someone steals your phone, grabs the lock pattern 'hash' (not sure on implementation details...), and brute forces it on a computer in a few seconds.

Guess I need to go read how that's implemented now.

If they could dump the phone's content already then why even waste the effect? Just perform a full backup, factory reset it, and then restore only the user's contents you want access to.

However if you have debugging disabled and no third party bootloader, you cannot access the filesystem while the phone is locked. So being able to crack some kind of hash is a moot point.

or, you could look at the oil smears on the phone and narrow it down to a much smaller subset to bruteforce.

That might work on a keypad in an office or bank, where the only thing being entered is that code, but on a phone where the screen is used for all kinds of swiping, you just get one big smudge in the middle, at least on my screen.

To my knowledge Android phones can have security settings turned on which either lock out or delete the phone's data after multiple incorrect attempts. In which case, a brute force method wouldn't be feasible to break into the phone.

The pattern lock actually tells you its insecure... so I dont see the gripe?

I use it to keep my toddler from messing up my phone while letting him play with it (and hes happy just playing with the pattern)

You can crack it most of the time by just looking at teh screen smudges...

I like using the pattern lock because I can unlock it while quite drunk.

Though maybe that's not the best idea...