10 Important Things You Need to Do Before Selling your Android Smartphone
Are you planning to sell your current Android smartphone but unaware of how to move on with the saved data on the current phone? Here are 10 important things you must do before selling your Android phone. No one wants to leave the personal data behind for the new customer and always wants to have a copy of contact information, photos, Whatsapp messages, or any other data stored on the device.
Must read the tips for backing up the data before handing out your smartphones for sale!
Step 1: Contact Backup
The first step you need to take is to sync all your contacts with your Gmail account. If you highly rely on Google apps then there will not be many issues in transferring data from your Android device to another. But if the contacts are not automatically synced, you can do it manually by going to https://contacts.google.com/.
Step 2: Backup of Messages and Call Records
The next step is to take a backup of your messages and call records just like your contacts. This can be done by downloading third-party software like SMS Backup and Restore from Google Playstore. You can create an XML backup from there and sync all the messages over to cloud services like Google Drive or Dropbox and restore from there in your new phone. For backup of call records, you can use the same app.
Step 3: Backup of photos, videos, and other media
For those who want to have a backup of photos and videos, you can either go for an external storage device or an internal one. For external storage, connect your phone to a laptop or personal computer using a USB cable. Once it is done, all your camera photos and videos will be seen in the folder called DCIM. For backing up your data in internal storage, you can go for Cloud Backup by syncing all your data to Google Photos.
Step 4: Log out and Remove all your Account
Before going for a factory reset, make sure you log out of all the Google accounts and remove them from your phone. Though factory reset can erase all your data but will not log you out of Google accounts. To search for logged-in accounts, go to ‘Accounts’ in phone settings or go to ‘Accounts’ via Gmail settings.
Step 5: Check for and Remove microSD cards
For all those who have inserted SD cards in your phone, make sure to remove it from the phone. Also, before detaching it, forget not to check if all the data is present in the SD card.
Step 6: Take Out SIM card
This goes without saying that before handing over your phone to someone for sale, do not forget to remove the SIM card from your phone.
Step 7: Create a Whatsapp Backup
Whatsapp is the most used instant messaging app around the world for all business activities or day-to-day conversations. Make sure you don’t forget to take a backup of your chat and media from Whatsapp settings. Also, for restoring your Whatsapp Data in your new device, enable the Google Drive backup from your device. You can also choose which data to include or not include when you install Whatsapp in your new device.
Step 8: Check if your Phone is encrypted
There is the most important step you should follow while selling your Android phone. Always check if your phone is encrypted or not before going for a factory reset. If it is not encrypted, do it manually via phone settings. The reason for doing this is that if the phone is encrypted it is very hard for someone else to access your data on your phone after a factory reset.
Step 9: Factory Reset is a Must
Once you have made a backup of all your important documents, files, media, chat and also checked if the phone is encrypted or not, go for factory reset. You can do this by searching the ‘Reset’ option on your phone and ‘Erase all Data’ to keep it safe. Nobody wants to share their personal data with someone else.
Step 10: Clean your Old phone.
Before selling it, wipe your old phone with a clean cloth, preferably one moist with a disinfectant solution. To get a better price for your phone, make sure to keep the phone properly in a phone box with all the accessories which came at the time of purchase.