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In depth clean up on phone
- Thread starter bluemoo21
- Start date
MrJavi
Android Expert
Hello @bluemoo21 and welcome to Android Forums 
I recommend, encrypting your data from phone settings (security) followed by performing factory reset. You'll need to Google FRP lock before you sell your phone.
https://www.androidcentral.com/factory-reset-protection-what-you-need-know?amp
PS: Remove Sim and external sd before selling.
I recommend, encrypting your data from phone settings (security) followed by performing factory reset. You'll need to Google FRP lock before you sell your phone.
https://www.androidcentral.com/factory-reset-protection-what-you-need-know?amp
PS: Remove Sim and external sd before selling.
How old is your phone? For a good few years now Android phones' internal storage has been encrypted by default. A factory reset will delete the encryption key, which makes data recovery after a reset extremely difficult (I'll never say "impossible": if you are of sufficient interest to a national security service for them to throw serious resources at it then I recommend putting a chisel through the storage chip instead. But otherwise a simple reset will suffice).
More importantly, make sure you remove your Google account from the phone before you reset it. If you don't then the buyer won't be able to use the phone unless they enter your Google login credentials first. This will rightly **** them off.
More importantly, make sure you remove your Google account from the phone before you reset it. If you don't then the buyer won't be able to use the phone unless they enter your Google login credentials first. This will rightly **** them off.
You do, but it might be that the option is greyed-out because the phone simply is encrypted. My Pixel 2 doesn't have an option in the settings to run unencrypted, it just tells you it's encrypted, end of story.
But was that "encrypt new data" already turned on? If that was on by default then everything you added to the phone would be encrypted anyway.
If you wanted to be really sure you could reset the phone, make sure that option is on, then fill the storage as full as you can (download movies until you can't fit any more, for example) to fill everything with encrypted data and then reset it again. Even create a temporary Google account for this (which you should remove before resetting, as above) so that none of your previous data are reimported). There did used to be apps that would fill your storage with junk for this purpose, in the days before encryption, but whether any still exist I don't know.
But was that "encrypt new data" already turned on? If that was on by default then everything you added to the phone would be encrypted anyway.
If you wanted to be really sure you could reset the phone, make sure that option is on, then fill the storage as full as you can (download movies until you can't fit any more, for example) to fill everything with encrypted data and then reset it again. Even create a temporary Google account for this (which you should remove before resetting, as above) so that none of your previous data are reimported). There did used to be apps that would fill your storage with junk for this purpose, in the days before encryption, but whether any still exist I don't know.
If you overwrite the storage that will remove any trace of previous data in that part of the storage.
Streaming won't do it. You need to fill the storage to be sure.
