Restore Android and safely delete data

We'll tell you how to reset your Android smartphone and safely delete your data. So you can use your old smartphone ...

You are the owner of a new smartphone and want to give your old device? If this is the case, the new owner should not be able to access your data. We'll tell you how to reset your Android smartphone and safely delete your data.

Preparatory steps

You want to share your smartphone, but the new owner is not supposed to have your photos, addresses and other data. Accordingly, you naturally want to reset your smartphone, the data but not permanently lose. Then you should back up the data first. A backup can be executed in different ways, which we show you in the articles:

If your data is on another device, you can delete the originals. This is done automatically when resetting to factory defaults, but resourceful users may recover the data. The second step of the preparation should be a complete device encryption. This is optional for Android devices with operating system version 4.4 KitKat or 5.0 Lollipop.

Especially devices, the Android 5.0 Lollipop only received with an update, are mostly not encrypted. Devices that were shipped with Android 6.0 Marshmallow on the factory should already be encrypted. You can skip this point with them.

Go to the Encryption settings for the internal memory. There you will find the item "Encrypt device". Activate it to encrypt your data with a standard key. In addition, you should enter an encryption PIN or pattern to additionally protect the data. This process restarts your smartphone. No data is lost yet.

Before deleting, you should encrypt the file system if not already done. / © CoolAndroidTips

Encrypting means that the next owner can not recover your data quickly with special software. If you delete your data from the smartphone in the following steps, your backlogs are not readable by the encryption.

Reset your smartphone

The actual step of resetting is quite simple. You go to the menu under Save & Reset. There, tap Reset to Factory Defaults and confirm with the code of your display lock.

Reset your device to factory defaults only in the menu. / © CoolAndroidTips

There is also the possibility to reset the smartphone in recovery mode. Then, however, the reactivation lock will intervene and ask for the last Google account used on the device. Such an unpleasant incident was once documented in our forum:

Smartphone remotely reset

If you do not have the smartphone any more and the next one works with it, you can delete the stored data from a distance. The delete command is executed when the smartphone connects to the Internet. However, data on the MicroSD card may remain. Go to the following website and log in with the Google account, which is also activated on your mobile phone:

Android Device Manager

Deletes the smartphone remotely. / © CoolAndroidTips

Cleaning up

After deleting the data you have to consider the other details: Have you removed the SIM-Kate? Have you removed the MicroSD card? Are you sure you want to remove the device from your Google Play account? And if you want to get rid of the Google ecosystem, you might want to delete your Google Account, along with all your data.