Nowadays, smartphones are filled with all sorts of personal data including contacts, schedules, photos, videos, documents, and more. Whether you're selling or giving away your old phone, you'll want to both save this personal data and prevent others from gaining access to it.
Here are a few steps to prepare your iPhone or Android phone for its new owner:
iPhone
- Back up the data on your smartphone using iTunes – iCloud users may be able to skip this step.
- Deactivate apps which lock your phone to your online identity, such as iMessage and Find my iPhone.
- Remove your sim card to protect your contacts and call logs.
- Perform a factory reset to return your device back to it's original state. Within settings, go to “General" and then "Reset.” Next, select “Erase all Content and Settings.”
Android
- Make sure your contacts, calendar entries, documents and settings are synced with your Google account. You can also use an all-in-one backup software of your choice.
- Back up your photos and videos to your own computer or a cloud storage service such as Dropbox, Flickr, or Microsoft OneDrive.
- Back up your text messages and call log using the app of your choice, or the option supplied by your service provider.
- Deactivate any apps which lock your phone to your online identity, such as Android Device Manager.
- Remove your sim card to protect your contacts and call logs.
- Remove any memory cards which may otherwise contain sensitive information.
- Enable encryption (usually found in Settings under "Security") to ensure that no-one can recover any data from your device after you perform the following step.
- Perform a factory reset to return your device back to it's original state.
Once you've reset your old phone to its factory settings, you may want to unlock it. Unlocking a smartphone allows it to be used with various service providers. If you don't unlock your phone, it will be tied to your service provider and may be harder to sell.
Some older smartphones (like Blackberries) also have separate mini-SD storage cards used to store photos, etc. Ensure you remove this card or delete the data on this storage device as well
