With an Android phone, any make or model, it may be a good idea format (this word is used here improperly, but it gives the idea) e reset your smartphone from scratch, delete everything and reset the system; this procedure can be very useful even when we want to sell the phone and we don’t want anyone to recover our sensitive data and information.
We will, therefore, show you in this guide how to format android and erase everything, so that you can start over with a new phone, just like it just left the factory.
How to reset Android
In the following chapters, we will show you all the valid methods to be able to restore Android to factory settings, so that you can get a new and fast phone or ready to be sold as a used phone.
Preliminary operations
Before proceeding with any type of formatting it is good to save all our personal data in the cloud so that we can recover them in case of problems during the formatting procedure or to restore them on a new Android phone (in case we wanted to sell the one form format).
To save the backup of the most important data, simply use the Google account: then we open the app Settings, let’s go to the menu Account and synchronization or Account, we press on the voice Google and make sure all the switches are active.
Once all the switches have been activated, we return to the previous menu and press on Sync now, so you can get the latest backup of your phone. The backup system of the phone also allows you to quickly restore the apps already present on the old device, so you can immediately start using our favorite apps again.
Instead, photos and videos can be saved to the cloud using Google Photos automatic upload, as seen in our guide to automatic backup with Google photos.
Personal documents can also be saved using the Google Drive app, so they can be recovered later.
Whatsapp messages will be recovered automatically with the automatic backup system and also those of Facebook will not be lost.
Practically, thanks to cloud technology, reset becomes a fast way to solve any problem and clean up your phone with the certainty of being able to restore personal data as you would on a new phone.
Before proceeding, we remove the microSD (if present): the data saved on it will be preserved by formatting.
How to format Android from the settings
To reset the Android phone the simplest procedure is to go to the menu Settings, scroll to the menu Backup and restore, then simply press on the entry in Factory data reset, All files on the phone, or similar.
As you can read on the confirmation screen, with factory reset all data is deleted, including apps, accounts, photos. Obviously the Android system remains installed and all the settings are reset as expected by the smartphone manufacturer.
After pressing on the item Reset phone we type the PIN code or the sequence to confirm the operation (this prevents another person from resetting our phone perhaps as a joke). After entering the PIN or password, there will be yet another warning that the data will be deleted and another button with written Reset to be pressed to delete everything.
The phone is immediately restarted, all the settings return to their default value, all the data removed and Android will have the appearance it had when the cell phone was bought, requesting to log in with a Google account and proceed with the initial configuration of Android.
How to format Android from recovery
Another effective procedure to completely wipe your phone is to use recovery, a special boot mode where you can access Android’s advanced settings.
To enter the recovery mode there are different procedures for each smartphone on the market: the easiest method to obtain the precise keys to press is to search on Google for the full name of our smartphone (manufacturer and model) followed by the keywords “recovery” or ” recovery button “.
Once the recovery access sequence has been identified, apply it and, in the screen that will open (using the Volume keys to navigate and the Power key to confirm), go to the item Wipe data/factory reset and we give the notice that will appear on the screen.
At the end of the process, we press on the item Reboot system now, so that we can restart our smartphone and benefit from a formatted and fast device as it just came out of the box.
Conclusions
What we have shown you above are the easiest and fastest methods to format Android and reset the phone by deleting everything, both in case we have a very slow phone and in case we want to sell it as used.
On many modern smartphones there is also an additional security system that requires Google login data immediately after formatting: this serves to prevent a thief from formatting the recovery phone and reusing it without problems, but it could also give some headaches in case of resale of the phone as used (we will have to unlock it before the sale).
In case the phone no longer turns on after formatting, please read the guide on how to restore android even if the phone doesn’t boot or looks dead.
If instead, we want to format and restore an iPhone, we recommend you read our article How to restore default settings (and data) on the iPhone and iPad.