Preparing an Android Phone for Sale

Modern mobile phones, due to their wide possibilities, have become an indispensable and very personalized thing. It stores personal data, photos, correspondence, work files, information about payments and bank accounts. Circumstances sometimes force you to part with your favorite technique, and in this case it is important to keep all personal information, as well as to take care of its protection from unauthorized persons. Many, especially older people, do not think about it in the old-fashioned way, selling or handing over the phone to someone for a while: they just keep the SIM card and USB flash drive, forgetting to clear the smartphone and leave the account. Given the specifics of modern gadgets, it is dangerous, you need to act correctly, and this instruction will help you.

How to set up a phone on Android for sale.

Back up important data

Now let's talk more about how to prepare a smartphone on the Android system for sale. The first step is to make backup copies of all important files. Very well, if at the time when you were using the phone, backup to the cloud storage was set up - you hardly have to do anything: there you can find all the documents, photos, videos, correspondence from instant messengers, contacts, application data and so on. Starting with the version of Android 5.0 and higher, the system automatically copies everything to the “Google Disk”, but if you have an older version, you can still enable this feature manually anyway:

  1. Go to the "Settings".
  2. Find “Backup copies and reset” there (the name may differ in different smartphones, but this should be a category of options where resetting and data recovery are offered).
  3. Select the profile in “Google” that you will use to store information, enter its email address in the suggested line and check the boxes next to “Backup” and “Auto-restore”.
  4. Connect to Wi-Fi and wait for everything to be copied. This can take quite a long time, which is why it is better to initially enable this function and save information as it becomes available.

Also, some applications additionally ask for your permission to create copies: for example, WhatsApp. If you allow, your chats will be periodically saved to the cloud and restored after a device change. If you don’t want to separately copy contacts, place them in a file, etc., then when saving a new one, it’s better to choose not the phone’s or SD’s memory, but Google’s storage. If you have problems with an Internet connection or during the process of copying failures are observed, connect the phone to the computer, select the “MTP Media Device” mode, open the folders, carefully review them and drop everything you need on the PC.

Cleaning the memory card

It is also important to know how to clear the smartphone of personal information before selling.

  1. Transfer all files to the SD card and remove it from the slot, and delete everything from the phone’s memory (this can be done manually or by resetting it to the factory settings, which will be discussed later).
  2. If a purchase with a microflash is specified, then the formatting of the SD is also included in the preparation of the phone for sale. To do this, go to "Settings" and select "Clear Map". Also, for reliability, you can connect the USB flash drive to the PC via the adapter, open the “Start” - “Computer”, right-click the manipulator on the SD-card name and select “Format”.
  3. Then make sure the memory is completely empty.

Reset to factory settings or flashing

After freeing up the memory, you need to delete the remaining information: your Google account information and personal settings - this will completely clear your Android phone.

  1. Open the "Settings" section.
  2. Select “Backup and Reset” - “Reset Settings”, and then follow the instructions.

If everything is done correctly, after the procedure you should see a welcome screen and an offer to choose a language, log in to your Google account and configure your smartphone.

For those who have already re-flashed the phone once, this method is not suitable. Before selling, you will have to once again resort to replacing the OS, in order to remove your data for sure. To do this, you need to choose a quality distribution kit and a program in order not to let the buyer down and not sell him a constantly-hanging and mistaken device, or use the services of professionals.