My brother passed away last month and I would like to repurpose his Motorola android phone for our mom. To do a factory reset requires his google credentials, it seems. I have been able to successfully get access to everything I needed to handle his affairs except the phone and the google credentials. I don't care about anything on the phone. I just want the phone in it's virgin state. Is there a way to do this? I don't know what the model is since I can't get past the login screen.

After looking at the Motorola models, I think this is probably a G.

We had a coworker that was a bit disgruntled wen he left and put a pattern lock on his phone before he left, then said he forgot it when asked.

We kept trying patterns until the phone eventually said if we entered an incorrect pattern one more time it would wipe the phone. That's basically what we wanted anyway, so we entered a wrong one one more time and the pone wiped itself letting us set it up for the guy's replacement.

A lot of third party phone repair places have tools that can factory reset phones. I have an octoplus pro that with the correct software may do it but my software is old. I recommend everyone setup what was called by many, Google death. They call it inactive account manager. Basically after being inactive for a preset period it notifies the account holder that if they dont login and confirm life it will forward your login information to your designated person. You can fill out a form indicating a user has died but no bets on them actually responding but could be worth a try.

Very sorry for your loss.

Factory Reset

From the phone being completely off, hold the volume down and power buttons until it comes up. Follow the directions.

Unfortunately. the Motorola instructions start out by saying that I need his gmail password, which I don't have. I am assuming if I do the reset procedure, I would be prevented from setting the phone up and it would still be a desk paperweight.

Doubtful. Once you do a factory reset, it shouldn't be attached to any Google account

I can confirm that after a factory reset and upon setting up the phone, the setup procedure requires the previously used password or the gmail account. Both of these I don't have as I mentioned in the original post. So, I guess I have a paperweight as a memory of my brother! It's hard to believe but I guess it takes the incentive out of stealing and reselling these things on the black market!

It's not a factory reset if that's the case. All android wipes I've ever done start with a clean slate. No memory of prior accounts.

There may be a way to contact google and show them your brother passed away and you're next of kin and they might let you in or help you reset the password.