Well, it finally happened, one of my kids changed the lock code on their iphone, promptly forgot the new code, then tried enough lock codes to disable the phone. Unfortunately, once the phone is disabled, there does not appear to a way to un-disable it and try more lock codes.
The only option at this point seems to be to erase the phone and restore from backup. I did not have iTunes available when it happened so I was unable to plug it in to my computer. Fortunately I did have Find My Phone active AND had iCloud backups active, which enabled me to use Find My Phone on a different device to locate and erase the disabled phone, then restore the phone from the last iCloud backup all without connecting to the disabled phone to a computer. There does not seem to be a way to check when the last backup was run except by doing a restore which would have been a nice thing to be able to to prior to wiping the phone. Fortunately, when I went to restore I found that the most recent backup was current.
If the phone is registered with iTunes on a computer, I believe that I could have plugged in, run a backup, then a restore, which yielded the same result, perhaps a better result, at least a faster result, as I would not have then had to download all the apps and music and everything else that is not included in an iCloud backup.
A few features that I would love to see:
1. Remotely change a lock code from an iCloud or Find My Phone client. I should be able to use my Apple ID to make changes to my phone regardless of the lock code.
2. Remotely un-Disable the phone, again using the Apple ID.
3. Check the state of my backups from a browser. I probably could have added the Apple ID to a different device as a new iCloud account to get access to the list of backups, but this seems a bit of a hassle when there is an iCloud portal that could easily.
4. Remotely trigger a backup process so that if a device is lost or disabled, one can be sure that they have a current copy device. Along with this perhaps also have the option to change what is backing up as your daily "just in case" backup settings bay be more restrictive for space reasons than the backup that you would run manually knowing that you were doing a full restore.
my $.02.
