Stolen S7 with no passcode lock - anything preventing the thief from using it ?

Hello,

A friend of mine had his Galaxy S7 stolen. The phone had no passcode or fingerprint set up, but it did have a Google account and a Samsung account set up.

While initially the phone did appear in the "find my phone" section of the Samsung account, now the Samsung account reports that no phone is registered. The phone could never be located after it was stolen, either via the Samsung service or Google service. Lock requests have been issued on both accounts, but I kind of doubt that they will have any effect ?

My question is: is there anything preventing the thief to use the phone ? Anything preventing the thief to reset it/reflash it and use it like it was a new phone ?

I did read that on iPhones, you cannot reset it/reflash it without entering the iCloud password, is some similar protection available for the S7 also ?

Thanks !