Back up your data

If your phone works and you can unlock it, be sure to:

• Copy your photos, videos, and music to a computer or to cloud storage.
• Make sure that any changes you made to contacts or calendar are synced to an account.
• Back up your text messages. Search for “sms backup” in Play Store to find an app for this.

Know your Google credentials

If you added your Google account to your phone, make sure you know the Gmail address and password for that account. To help prevent others from using your phone without permission, after you reset a phone, you can’t set up the phone until you enter your Google account information again.

If you’ve forgotten the Gmail address and password for your Google account:

1. Visit Google’s website to reset the password.
2. On a computer, log in to Gmail and confirm that the new password works.
3. Wait 24 hours after changing your password before resetting your device. For security, you can't use an account to set up a phone after reset if that password changed within 24 hours.

To erase all data and reset your phone:

1. Go to Settings > Backup & reset.
2. If you’re resetting because you suspect a third-party app is causing problems, turn off Automatic restore. Instead of automatically restoring apps after the reset, you’ll want to restore them one at a time to determine which is causing the problem.
3. Touch Factory data reset.

If you can’t access Settings, do an external reset.

Everything will be deleted from your phone. However, if you personalized your wallpaper or startup message at the time of purchase, you can preserve the personalized content shipped with your phone.

1. Make sure your battery is charged at least 30%.
2. Turn off the phone.
3. Press and hold the Volume Down button and the Power button at the same time until the phone turns on.
4. Press the Volume Down button until you see Recovery mode.

5. Press the Power button to restart in Recovery mode.

6. If you see an Android robot with a red exclamation mark, press and hold the Power button, then press and release the Volume Up button to display the menu options.
7. Use the Volume buttons to scroll to Wipe data/factory reset, then press the Power button to select it.

8. Use Volume buttons to scroll to an option and press the Power button to select it:

   • Userdata only: preserves personalized content shipped with your phone, including power up message, image, wallpaper, and ringtones
   • Userdata + personalized content: deletes all content and data

   Allow several seconds for the reset to complete.

9. Use Volume buttons to scroll to Reboot system now, then press the Power button to select it.

   Allow several minutes for the reboot to complete. If the phone doesn't finish rebooting, press & hold the Power button until the screen turns dark, then release it to power up normally.

10. If you reset your phone because you suspect a third-party app is causing problems, when you set up the phone again, on the Get your apps & data screen, touch under Restore from backup and select Set up as new device. Then, restore one app at a time and use the phone for a while. If the phone has no issues, install the next app and retest.