If you have decided to sell or give away your old phone, here is a guide on what to do before handing over the device.
Your phone holds a wealth of personal data stored on it. The gadget used to be a destination for lots of photos, music, videos, contacts, text messages, emails and other private information like passwords and credit card details. When the device is going to another hand, you would not like to share sensitive data with them. So, what to do?
You need to take proper steps to retain those data, and at the same time, ensure that the old phone holds none of your personal pieces anymore. That means, at first, you should take backups of your important contents on the device, transfer those backup files to a safe place and finally wipe the old device.
Unlock the Phone
You can increase the value of your device and the likelihood of selling it as unlocked. It’s simple to unlock your phone, so it’s available to any carrier network. For example, perhaps you bought your phone on contract from T-Mobile or Verizon. That means it’s locked to that carrier which creates obvious restrictions for anyone interested in buying your device. You can use your network carrier IMEI with a service like Mobile Unlocked or Doctor SIM and free your phone for just a few bucks.
Backup and Sync
If your old device was an iOS, Android or Windows Phone OS based smartphone, you can sync your phone settings, contacts, notes and so on with the cloud services like iCloud, Google or Outlook account respectively. There are also desktop clients available for iPhone, Android smartphone or Windows phone. You can use Apple’s iTunes software on your PC or Mac to backup and sync your iPhone. If you are going to replace an older iPhone with a newer one, this will help you to get back the previous settings, apps, contacts, media items etc. on the new iOS smartphone.
In case you are going to change your smartphone within Windows Phone OS, that means both of the older and newer devices are running Windows, then you can easily backup your contents with Microsoft’s official Sync app which is available for Windows and Mac computers.
For Android smartphones, there are official backup tools from your device manufacturers. For example, Samsung offers Kies to backup and manage contents on your Android smartphones. HTC provides Sync Manager for desktop to synchronize your HTC device’s contacts, media files etc. Visit your device maker’s website to get help regarding this.
You can use third party apps like MobileTrans for cross-platform switching. Use those apps to backup and import personal data between different smartphone platforms.
Wipe the Old Phone
After successfully backing up and synchronizing your necessary data, the very last step is erasing the old phone. Before that, remove your SIM card and SD card from the device because supposedly you are going to keep those stuffs with you. Now reset the device using its factory reset tool found in its Settings menu.
For an iPhone, do it here: Settings > General > Reset > Erase all Content and Settings.
Another alternative to clean up your iPhone is to use iMyphone Umate app which is available for Windows and Mac and helps you to release more storage on your iPhone. Being an excellent iPhone cleaner it allows you to deal with junk and temporary files, remove unnecessary apps, delete large files to regain more space or even compress your photos, saving originals to your computer.
If you are dealing with an Android smartphone, Go to: Settings > Security > Encryption. From here, encrypt your phone contents. Then perform a factory reset by going Settings > Backup & Reset > Factory Data Reset. For more security, put some dummy data into the phone and again reset the device to factory settings.
To reset a Windows smartphone, go here: Settings > About > Reset your Phone. This will wipe out your data stored on the device.
This was an overview on what should you do before selling or giving away your old phone. I hope you will find this post useful in protecting your privacy. Please share your experience with us related to this matter. Thanks.