Here's how to format your Android smartphone properly

The smartphone industry is ever growing and people tend to switch their smartphones in order to upgrade to new ones at least once in two years if not earlier. So when a person switches to a new smartphone, they often decide to give the old smartphones to someone or just sell it to decrease the damage done by the newer model. These Android smartphones carry some really important information collected during the period of time we use them. So it is really important to delete every bit of data stored.

Usually, when we press the 'delete' button, the smartphone does not delete the files but actually hides them somewhere and shows some free space. This is done so that if you accidentally deleted anything, it can be recovered by some tweaks. This also takes place to keep the storage of the device in a smooth running condition as a lot of modifications can damage the storage.

Encrypt your device

Android smartphones have a feature called 'Encrypt' where the data is scrambled in such a way that no one will be able to access them. Here is how you can encrypt your smartphone.

• Head over to Settings
• Tap on Security and then tap on 'Encrypt Phone'

Also Read: How to change default apps on an Android smartphone

These steps might vary from phone to phone. Also, some smartphones might come Encrypted out of the box.

Hard Reset

Instead of your traditional way of going into settings and formatting your device, we suggest you do it from your Android smartphone's recovery mode.

• Power off your smartphone
• Press and hold the power button and volume down button
• Navigate to Factory Data Reset

Do note that this procedure might differ from phone to phone. The key combination might be different for some phone to get into recovery mode. If you are not able to access recovery mode with this key combination, you might need to Google your 'phone name' with 'recovery mode'. If you are not able to access your recovery mode, you can still go with the traditional way of formatting as the phone is encrypted (if you followed the above steps).