It is often one of the most effective and at the same time one of the most drastic solutions we suggest to our readers.
The so-called Restore to Factory data of Android devices allows you to bring back your smartphone or tablet equipped with the Google mobile operating system in the factory state (hence the name), or without any data belonging to you and with all the settings, starting from the most basic to the most complex, reset and replaced with the default ones.
Why do we suggest to our readers such a drastic solution to their problems, and why, regardless of the presence or absence of problems related to the user experience.
Is it good to make such a restoration from time to time?
For the simple reason that, as happens for example on Windows PC or MacOS, the system over time tends to become heavy and become slower and slower.
Restoring the system to its initial state allows to start from zero and to have a fluid and clean system from all the problems that have accumulated in the previous months.
In addition, some combinations of applications or settings or changes to the system made by the manufacturers of smartphones and tablets can give rise to the occurrence of particular bugs that are practically unsolvable, and the only solution is the one we are talking about in these first paragraphs.
Let’s see together how to reset Android in a few, practical steps thanks to the features integrated into the system itself.
Preliminary Procedures
Before making a factory data reset, let’s see some steps to save your data. First, considering that if you have an Android device you are almost certainly using an email account, perhaps Google, it is good to set the so called Backup account. Go to Settings -> Backup and Restore -> Backup Accounts .
From here you can select one of your accounts to save settings, apps and games installed so that in case of recovery you can bring the device back to its current state.
We did not use the ” almost ” randomly. In reality, this backup does not save the data of your games or your applications; it will limit itself to remembering the software installed at the time of restoration by reinstalling everything via the Play Store.
The backup is a rather complex theme, and deserves a separate guide. Suffice it to say that for the full backup you need the root permissions, which to back up WhatsApp you can rely on Google Drive and for the backup of Photos and Videos you can rely on Google Photos.
Some devices, such as the recent Samsung smartphones, have their own recovery system that uses proprietary accounts and that allows you, for example, to save the layout of the elements of your home, the apk files, settings and so on.
You will have to manually check on your device the presence or not of such features, you can always find them under Settings -> Backup and Restore.
How to Restore Android
Once you are sure of the decision or proceed with a reset to factory data, the steps to follow are really simple.
We remind you, however, again that by doing so you will lose apps and games, in addition to the data saved on them, personal information, documents, photos, videos, music, contacts stored on your device and so on.
If you have skipped the previous paragraph we suggest you take a look at it. It is also good to know that the data on microSD, or the external memory of your device, will not be deleted during the procedure.
So if you need to save photos, videos or documents you can take advantage of the microSD as a backup tool.
In fact, a good part of the steps to restore the factory data we have already listed them, but let’s see them for safety:
- Enter the settings of your Android smartphone or tablet;
- Look for Backup and Restore or Privacy; it depends on where the manufacturer of your device has placed the option;
- Scroll through the items and look for Factory data reset or Phone reset;
- Scroll to the bottom and accept, provided that you are first sure you have saved all the useful data;
- All that remains is to wait for the procedure to finish and the device to restart.
Hard Reset Android
There is another procedure to completely reset an Android device, to be used in emergencies as definitive blocks of the device, perhaps during a software update or even during a factory data reset.
A software external to the operating system that allows you the deletion of data and settings is called Hard Reset and to use it you must access the recovery of your device.
To access the recovery you have to restart your device in recovery mode, an operation that usually takes place from smartphone off with a combination of keys that could be Volume Down + Power Key + Home key at the same time.
The procedure, however, changes from smartphone to smartphone: our advice is to search directly on Google with a search string in style ” Device Name Recovery “.
Once in recovery mode you can navigate through the menu items using the volume keys and confirm with the power button.
Select the Recovery item and then search for and select the Wipe Data / Factory Reset option. At this point select OK from the menu that will open and wait for the operation to complete.
Restore Android without losing data
In the very first paragraph, that is the one dedicated to preliminary procedures, we have already explained some of the dynamics behind the restoration of factory data and backup.
By doing a reset you obviously lose all the data on your Android device (except those on microSD). Restoring Android without losing data is therefore virtually impossible.
If you have backed up through the Google account and if you use typical cloud services such as Play Games, Google Photos, WhatsApp, Dropbox or similar, technically once logged in with your credentials you will find everything in their place.
The only way to perform a reset and only then bring the smartphone to the same state in which it was left before carrying out this operation, is to use applications that require the permission of the root such as Titanium Backup.