How To Factory Reset An Unresponsive Android Phone
Is your Android phone unresponsiveand you’ve already tried several fixes to no avail? You might have to reset your phone to factory settings. There are several things that could affect the performance of an Android phone — for instance, it could slow down due to a lack of free space, too many apps in the background, malware, or even a faulty battery. And you should only consider resetting your Android phone after trying to fix the common problems.
You can quickly check the free space on your phone by heading to the Settings app and selecting Storage. The Storage menu gives you a clear idea of how much storage space the apps on your phone occupy and what capacity is left. You can free up some space accordingly by deleting apps and files. On the other hand, clearing the recent apps section frees up the RAM responsible for opening and running apps. If you’reconcerned that your phone has contracted malware, anti-virus apps like Norton and Kaspersky should help remove it.
While these are just a few ways to fix a slow Android phone, a factory reset should be your last resort simply because it erases all of the data, including images, videos, contacts, call logs, messages, apps, and system settings. Before moving ahead with a factory reset, you’ll need to create a backup so you don’t lose the valuable data stored on your phone.
Backup the data on your phone using Google’s services
Theeasiest way to back up your databefore resetting an Android device is via Google’s services. There is a good chance that you use Google Photos for viewing, editing, and sharing images and videos on your phone. Well, you can create a backup using Google Photos, as well.
To back up the files and documents on your Android phone, useGoogle Drive.
Last but not least, install theGoogle Oneapp on your phone and back up things like app data, call logs, contacts, text messages, and other system settings.
How to reset your Android phone to factory settings
Keep your Google ID and password ready and charge your phone’s battery to at least 70% to perform a factory reset. While every Android phone has the option to “Erase all data (factory reset),” the location of this setting could vary depending on the manufacturer. Resetting a phone to factory settings could take between five and 10 minutes. Here are the general steps that should work for most Android users, but the exact menu locations and names on your phone may be different.
When the process is complete, the phone will boot in setup mode. Follow the on-screen instructions to initialize the phone. It should also ask you to sign in to your Google account and restore your data. Once your phone is ready, it will allow you to access the home screen, where you can check whether it is responding better than before.
Start by opening some apps to see if they open in time. Switching between apps is another way to test whether the phone has become more responsive. Last but not least, you can alsotry connecting to the nearest wireless networkto access the internet. If you don’t face any problems doing these things, and your phone feels smoother than before, performing a factory reset was right.
How to reset an Android phone using Recovery Mode
If you cannot reset your Android phone via the Settings menu, there’s another way to erase all the data on your phone: Recovery Mode. Whether you have aSamsung Galaxy S22or aPixel 7, every Android smartphone has a Recovery Mode that allows you to do several things, such as rebooting the system, installing updates, clearing the cache, and resetting the device to factory settings. First, switch off your Android phone, then follow the steps to reset via Recovery Mode.
On the other hand, if you have a Samsung Galaxy phone running One UI 3.0 or above, you’d have to connect your phone to your computer with a USB-C cable before you may boot in Recovery Mode.
Keep in mind that you’ll still need to back up all of your data before performing this action, otherwise, your photos and any other files that aren’t already backed up will be lost.
