A factory reset
is the ultimate cleansing of your Android device. It's usually either a
last resort to fix a problem, done before you sell it, or because you
like to flash ROMs. When you perform a factory reset you're essentially
wiping out everything you've ever done to the phone and restoring it
back to the basic manufacturer software. As we've mentioned before,
it doesn't uninstall any software updates you've received from the
folks who made your phone, but it does wipe out any core application
updates you've grabbed from the Google Play store. The technical details
are as follows:
- /system is untouched, because it's normally read-only
- /data is erased
- /cache is erased
- /sdcard is untouched
When your phone or tablet reboots, it's like it was
when you opened the box as far as apps and user data goes, except for
your data on the SD card partition (either a real, physical microSD card
or a partition named sdcard).
Doing a factory reset is easy -- open the settings,
do a little digging (different manufacturers put it in different places,
but start with privacy or storage), select it and confirm. Your device
will reboot into the recovery partition, erase everything, they reboot
into the setup again. One thing to note though -- if you've rooted and ROM'd
in any way, you should never do a factory reset from settings. Often
times it works just fine, but some devices and some ROMs are so
different once hacked that you'll end up with a bricked phone. We hate
bricked phones around these parts. Follow the instructions from the
folks who developed the software you're running instead, and use the
reset method they recommend.
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