5 Things You Must Do Before You Sell Your Android Smartphone

Before you handover the ownership of your Android smartphone to someone else, you must do the following 5 steps to ensure that your data has been completely backed up, and erased from the device. You would not want the buyer of your smartphone to get to see your personal pictures or videos or your text messages. For that purpose it is important you carefully perform the following 5 steps.

1. Backup your data & Sync your settings to your Google Account

This section deals with backing up of data that includes your contacts, Google+ photos, your App data, Gmail, calendar entries, Web browser bookmarks etc. For backing up all data you should do the following:

Go to Settings > Accounts (tap Google) > Select Google account > check everything you want to sync.

Incase you want to backup your WiFi password, Go to Settings > Backup & reset > and check “Backup my data”.

2. Backup your photos and Videos

Your smartphone is like a recorder of your daily activities. You record videos and take pictures of many small and big moments of your daily life. It is necessary to backup your images and videos for shifting them to different smartphone. You can backup images and videos to either your computer or Cloud.

Incase you want to back it up to your computer, first Connect your smartphone to your computer and copy-paste all your photos and videos from device memory and SD card to your PC. Alternatively, you can simply backup your data using cloud provided you have a Wifi connection because mobile data will bury quite a big hole in your pocket. You can use a number of cloud based services like Dropbox, Google Photos, Flickr, and Microsoft OneDrive. Once you have connected your phone over a WiFi network, these services would automatically ask for backing up your data.

3. Backup your calls logs and texts

In order to backup your call logs and texts, use Apps provided by AT&T and Verizon Cloud. There are many other Apps available on the Google Play but it’s better to be safe and secure with Apps from credible developers. You should never use any third party or non-credible source for backing up your data. They might be infected with a malware and sniff away your data even before you come to know.

4. Encrypt your data & Disable Reactivation Lock

Once all data has been backed up, it’s time to erase it from the device. Before you perform factory reset, you should encrypt your data. While factory reset erases all data from phone, cases have been found wherein certain quantity of data has been retained even after factory reset.

To encrypt data, Go to Settings > Security > Encrypt phone. If you are planning to handover the SD card also, then you should encrypt SD card as well. Once you have encrypted your data you need to Disable Reactivation Lock. Go to Settings > Security > and Uncheck Reactivation lock.

5. Perform Factory Reset

After you are done successfully with the above 4 steps, its time for a factory reset. Go to Settings > Backup & reset > Factory data reset >Tap “Reset Device”.