Frustrated, Marco turned to the internet. He typed into a search engine:

Marco wasn’t a tech enthusiast. He was a practical man who bought the Sony Xperia E5 (model F3311) back in 2016 because it fit his hand perfectly and had a battery that lasted all day. For four years, it was his loyal companion. Then, one day, he dropped it. The screen spiderwebbed, and he reluctantly upgraded, stuffing the old Sony into a drawer “just in case.”

First, he found forum posts claiming a magical “lock remove file” existed—a single ZIP file that, when flashed, would wipe the lock screen. Some links led to broken Russian websites. Others led to “unlock code generator” scams asking for his IMEI and a credit card. One file was simply named unlock.zip but turned out to be a virus that his antivirus screamed about.

But you can delete it from recovery—if you have an unlocked bootloader. And that was the key.