If you are planning to sell your phone to a person that you have never met in real life, you want to make sure that you are not handing it out to the buyer with your personal information on it. Not only that, you want to make sure that you are giving them a phone that is completely empty.
If you have no idea on what to do before you sell your phone, don’t worry, we are going to help you out and guide you in the entire process.
Before letting go of your beloved phone, make sure you follow the checklist that we have below so you can make sure that the person that’s getting your phone is not getting anything about your personal data.
7 Important Things You Need To Do With Your Phone Before Selling It
1. Copy your pictures into a USB or computer
The first thing that you need to do before selling the phone is make sure that you are copying your pictures into a USB or into your personal phone. This is important because once you delete all the pictures that are present in your phone, you are not going to get them back, which might lead to some procrastination in the future.
One thing you want to keep in mind is to delete the pictures from the “Recently Deleted” folder in your gallery, especially if you have some pictures that are not meant to be seen by other people.
You also want to delete the pictures that are in your hidden folder gallery. Doing this will help you keep your personal stuff away from potential freaks who might leak them on the internet.
2. Factory reset your phone
The second thing that you need to do before handing out the phone is to make sure that you factory reset it.
Once you have copies of all the pictures, videos and other data that you need on your computer or a drive, you want to set the phone back to its factory default state before you hand it to the new owner, considering that personal data in the wrong hands could be dangerous.
On a smartphone, the factory reset option is one of the most easily found settings.
If you are using an Android phone, all you have to do is go to the settings, go to backup and reset and hit the factory data reset button.
If you are using an iPhone or an iPad, all you have to do is head to the Settings, go to General, hit Reset and click Erase All Content and Settings.
3. Properly clean everything
Before you hand out the phone to someone, you want to make sure that you are not giving them a dirty phone. Instead, before giving them the phone, try to clean the phone properly with a microfiber cloth. Doing this can make the deal better and the person that is getting it will really appreciate your small gesture of cleaning the phone before handing it to them.
4. Delete all contacts and messages
The fourth thing that you want to do before handing out your phone to the next owner is to make sure that you have deleted all the contacts and messages from the device itself.
Yep, you have to do this before you hit the factory reset button in the settings.
When deleting, make sure you double check everything. Also, the process only takes around 2 to 3 minutes, considering that most of the modern smartphones these days have a “Delete All” button once you are trying to delete some contacts.
5. Manually logout from all your accounts
Before you hit the factory reset button, you want to manually logout from all your accounts via the settings, considering that there is a chance that you might forget to factory reset the phone before selling it.
Doing this simple thing will allow the person to have access on your personal data, especially your emails, messages on social media and many more.
6. Remove SD Card
Don’t forget about the extra stuff your phone has!
Before you sell your phone, make sure that you have removed the SD Card, considering that your SD card can be carrying your personal information, which includes pictures, videos and other documents and files.
Do this before you bring the phone outside and to be honest, it should be on your priority list.
7. Take out your SIM Card
The last one that we want you to do is make sure that you are taking out your SIM Card before you hand out your phone to the new owner.
Doing this simple thing will help you keep your personal numbers safe and it will keep you away from the hassle of getting a new SIM card because you accidentally left it in the phone that you sold to a random person.
Did we miss out anything in the list above? Let us know what we missed out by leaving a comment in the comments section below!