Pre-sale preparation of an Android phone. How to completely clean your Android phone. Removing film from the screen
For many, a tablet or smartphone is not just a means of communication, but also a storage of personal files and data: a notepad, diary, task manager, photo album and even wallet. What kind of secrets do people not trust with their devices: from intimate photos and correspondence to confidential papers and passwords from bank accounts.
It is not surprising that Android allows you to copy personal information to the cloud for convenient transfer to new gadgets and completely erase it on old ones. Lifehacker's instructions will help you cope with these tasks. It's based on pure Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow, but if you're using a different version of the system, these tips will also work. Although some menus and options may vary slightly.
Gadgets running Android 5.0 and newer OS versions automatically copy most user data and settings to Google servers. These are the interface parameters and Wi-Fi networks, contacts, list installed programs and even internal data from some of these programs. This feature greatly simplifies the transition to a new device. You simply connect your account to it - and copies of old data are downloaded there from the Internet.
To use backup, you must enable it in settings. To do this, find the section responsible for recovery and reset. Open it, select a Google account to store your data and settings, and then enable backup and auto-recovery.
Next, connect to the Internet and wait 30 minutes for it to happen backup. During the process, Android will duplicate settings and data Google applications, synchronized with the account you selected. The system will also copy data to the cloud third party programs, whose developers have implemented support for backup via Google. You can quickly restore all this on a new gadget.
If your device has an outdated Android system or you are not sure whether the backup covers important files, make copies of them manually.
Connect your phone to your computer in file storage mode and view the contents of the gadget in Explorer. Save important pictures, music, books, videos and other information from your device to your computer. As alternative option you can duplicate the information in Dropbox or another.
In the future, you will be able to manually copy information saved on your computer or in the cloud to a new device.
3. Remove SD and SIM cards
Your phone number It is gradually taking on the role of a universal identifier for a wide variety of services, so it would be a shame to lose it. After demonstrating the capabilities of the smartphone to the buyer, do not forget to take out your SIM card. The same goes for the memory card, especially if your device was sold without it by default.
If you want to leave the memory card to the new owner as a bonus or because it was included in the standard package, be sure to erase it before selling it. To do this, open your phone settings and find the corresponding item in the storage section.
After backing up your important data and clearing your memory card, you should delete all data from your device. The fastest and reliable way to do this is to return to factory settings. As a result, your phone or tablet will be the same as it was when it arrived at the store.
To perform a reset, connect the device to a power source and use the appropriate option in the device settings. For example, on pure Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow, the required item is located in the “Recovery and reset” section and is called “Factory reset”.
After the reset, your phone will reboot, and you will see that it has become pristine and immaculate.
But if you tinkered with the firmware, this will not return the factory version. In this case, you may need to flash the device with factory firmware, which can usually be found on the manufacturer's website.
When all of the above steps are completed, you can transfer the device to a new user without fear for personal data.
Buying a new smartphone once a year (and for some more often) has become the norm. In this case, the old device, as a rule, is passed on to other family members or sold. In this article, you will learn how to best prepare your Android for transfer to a new owner. Return your smartphone to its original state appearance It’s hardly possible without replacing parts, but restoring the software to its original form is not at all difficult.
Step 1: Back up important data
Active users of mobile gadgets quickly accumulate personal photos, documents, notes, books and other important data on them, which they do not want to lose. Therefore, the first thing you need to do is move them to a safe place. This can be done different ways, each of which can be devoted to a separate article. But the following sequence of actions can be proposed as one of the options.
1. Sync your address book, mail and calendar with corresponding Google services. This is the easiest way to transfer them to a new device under Android control.
2. Create backup copies of installed programs and their data. To do this, you can use both the popular Titanium Backup and free program Easy Backup & Restore, which will additionally help you backup your SMS messages, call logs, dictionary and bookmarks. You can choose an external SD card or a cloud service as the archive storage location.
3. Connect your smartphone to your computer and copy music files, videos, photos and other user data that you want to save from the internal and external memory of the device.
Step 2: Clear the memory card
If you decide to leave the memory card in your smartphone, be sure to make sure that there is no data left on it. We hope that before completely wiping the SD memory, you have backed up the necessary data, as described in the first step of this instruction.
1. Open your device settings.
2. Go to the "Memory" section.
3. Click on the “Clear SD” item.
However, simply erasing regular means the system may not be enough because the files you deleted can be recovered if desired using special programs. Therefore, it is advisable to use the services of one of the utilities that can repeatedly rewrite free place, leaving no chance to recover your information - for example Secure Wipe.
Step 3. Factory reset or flashing
This is a very important step, which you should proceed to only if you are sure that you have backup copies of your applications, documents, passwords, messages, settings and other things you need. After this operation, your smartphone will return to the same state in which it was released by the manufacturer.
1 . Open your smartphone's settings.
2 . Go to the "Backup and Reset" section.
3 . Tap on the “Reset settings” item.
4 . You will be shown a warning about deleting all existing data, which you must agree to by clicking on the “Reset phone settings” button.
Separately, it is necessary to dwell on the case when you installed any third-party firmware on your smartphone. It would be best to inform the potential buyer about this and get his opinion. If he agrees to use your firmware, then you can simply reset the settings, as described above. If the buyer wants to return the manufacturer's firmware, then you will have to download and install the factory ROM on the device. You probably know how to do this if you have already installed custom firmware.
When selling a smartphone, it is important to take care of deleting personal data so that it does not fall into the wrong hands. It is important to remember that no method other than physical destruction will be able to clear personal information 100%; with the right tools, it can be recovered.
Below are tips for three popular mobile OSes, but if you have an older phone model or an alternative operating system, it is better to find cleaning information in the user manual.
First of all:
- Do backup copy data, including contacts
- Pull out the SIM card and memory card
- Log out of all social networks and then delete their data
- Perform encryption and also erase data from the microSD card
- Save the serial number of your smartphone or tablet
Android
The easiest way to clean Android smartphone— perform a reset to factory settings. It's also worth encrypting the device. To do this, go to Settings, menu Safety and find the corresponding item. On different devices this function can be positioned in different ways.
After the reset, don't forget to delete your phone from your social media accounts. To remove a device from your Google account, you need to go to a special page security.google.com/settings/security/activity, click on his name, and then click Close access.
iOS
Apple devices on iOS versions 5 or higher enable hardware encryption when setting a password. If you reset using the method below, the encryption key will be deleted. This will make it much more difficult for attackers to recover deleted data.
Step 1: Before starting the reset, make sure that all services are disabled, start with the lost smartphone search service. To disable this feature, go to Settings > iCloud > Find iPhone. If prompted, enter your Apple ID password.
Step 2: Sign out of your iCloud account completely. Go to again Settings > iCloud. At the bottom of the page, find the button " Go out". For iOS 7 devices, this item is called “ Delete account«.
Step 3: Disable iMessage and Apple ID services.
For iMessage, find Settings > Messages and turn off the iMessage option. For Apple ID you need to go to Settings > iTunes and Apple Store, click on your email, then select " Go out«.
To be more confident, you can log out of linked services, such as Facebook or Twitter.
Step 4: Start the data erase process. Find Settings > General > Reset > Erase all data and settings. Confirm your choice.
Step 5: If you have registered your device with serial number, remove the link on the special page supportprofile.apple.com.
Windows Phone
For now, encryption is only offered to business users Windows Phone. The easiest way to erase Windows Phone 8 is to do a factory reset and then download dummy data to overwrite user data traces.
Step 1: Open Settings. Find an item Device information, press Reset.
Step 2: Confirm your choice, wait for the process to complete.
Step 3: Connect your smartphone to PC, then open My computer. If you are using Mac, download a special application. Find your phone in the list, open it.
Step 4: Load the dummy data by dragging it from another folder. Do not use personal photographs or documents. It is better to upload files that do not contain metadata that can identify you. Fill as much space as possible.
Step 5: Reset the phone again using the method from the first step. Upload dummy files several times to ensure that the real data is destroyed.
Step 6: Perform a final reset.
All modern portable digital devices under Android control are linked to personal mail or profile in in social networks. Therefore, if you decide to sell your beloved Android smartphone or tablet, but you don’t want personal data, photos or videos to become available to the buyer, then in such cases you need to quickly and easily clean it. This will also help if, after downloading a whole bunch of unknown applications, a virus was installed. This can be done in several ways, without resorting to using any programs:
- Reset to factory settings
- Perform a hard reset
1. How to reset to factory settings on android
This method is quite simple and we recommend its use. To do this, you need to enter the “settings” menu. The choice then depends on android versions. For Android 4.x and higher “Restore and reset”. For more old Android 2.x – “Confidentiality”. In the available menu, select “Reset settings” with one click.
Reset example on version 5 of Android
After this, the system will notify you again that all data, as well as linked profiles, will be deleted from the phone. You need to confirm the action by clicking “Reset phone settings”. After rebooting the phone, Android will be completely cleaned. That's how simple and fast it is, unlike the next method.
2. How to reset settings on Android (hard reset)
Attention use this method may cause malfunction Android systems. Use only if the first one does not help.
This method of cleaning Android is really effective when, after installing the application, a message appears about paid unlocking of the device or you forgot the pattern key.
First you need to fully charge and then turn off the phone. Next, you need to enter the “Recovery” mode. You need to press and hold a certain key combination. Each manufacturer has its own set of keys. We will give the most common options and look at an example Samsung phone Galaxy.
- Volume up (or down) key + power key
- Both volume keys (up + down) + power key
- Volume up (or down) key + home key + power key
You must keep them pressed until it lights up dark screen with text in the top left. This is the “Recovery” menu. You can move around it using the up and down keys, and select the power button.
Move down to the item “wipe data / factory reset» Confirm by pressing the power key. On the next screen, confirm the choice “Yes – delete all user data” in the same way. The procedure for cleaning the phone and returning to factory settings will begin. You will return to the initial menu, where you will need to select the “Reboot system” item to reboot the phone.
We hope the material on completely cleaning Android devices was useful to you. If you have questions, you can ask them in the comments.
You may think that when you do a factory reset (Hard Reset) and agree to wipe everything on your Android device, all your data will be destroyed forever. But you are wrong.
As many researchers have discovered, data can be recovered with the right tools even after a factory reset has been performed. This is because when you delete something, the file itself is not actually overwritten - the system simply discards all the information from the file, using the free space you have.
The extracted data could be a real privacy issue if you ever plan to sell or lend your Android smartphone. There are, however, several ways to ensure that your data is truly erased permanently.
Encrypting smartphone data
Encrypting Android device data is the strongest way to prevent data from being recovered. By encrypting device data, you are essentially mixing up all the data and locking it with a special key. Encrypted data cannot be retrieved without entering the passcode.
Google requires most devices running Android 6.0 Marshmallow (with the possible exception of some budget devices) to have mandatory encryption to ensure maximum security.
If your device is running Android 5.0 Lollipop or lower (and supports encryption), then it is highly recommended that you enable encryption (Settings > Security > Encrypt device) to secure your data before doing a factory reset (The path to encryption settings may vary on different devices).
By performing a reset, you will essentially erase encrypted data that is virtually unrecoverable.
Overwriting smartphone memory with other data
After you have encrypted the data on your smartphone, performed a factory reset and erased everything that was in the device’s memory, you can be sure that all data has been destroyed and is definitely not recoverable. Overwriting memory with other useless data will help with this.
To do this, go to the cleaned smartphone, but this time do not enter any Google accounts or something like that. Once your device is up and running as new, go ahead and start recording videos for as long as you can in the most high resolution. Repeat as many times as you need to fill all the available space.
Then do another factory reset.
Repetition
If you're a little paranoid about security, you can follow the tips above and run them several times until you're sure the data is sufficiently encrypted and overwritten with new data. At the same time, even if someone is able to recover the data, they will not receive anything useful. But if you do not have state secrets, one cycle of the actions described above should be enough for you, after which you can safely transfer the smartphone to other people.
