Today’s smart phones are actually small, but powerful hand-held computers that are subject to all the annoyances and dangers that can afflict their larger cousins like laptops and desktop PCs.
Indeed, phones often become bloated with unnecessary apps and corrupted files. And unfortunately, they can even become infected with malware.
Fantastic apps like Lookout Mobile Security and Clean Master can help keep your phone free of malware, bloatware and other junk, but phones can still occasionally get so messed up and unstable that they become virtually unusable. And in extreme instances, they even lock up completely.
When situations like these arise, the best (and sometimes only) option is to simply do a factory reset on the phone and start over from scratch. But what if you don’t know how to do a factory reset on your particular phone?
A wonderful website called Reset Hard gives step-by-step video instructions for performing a factory reset on dozens of popular smart phones. The site doesn’t have tutorials for every phone in use today, but it does cover the vast majority of them.
Note: If your particular phone isn’t covered by the Reset Hard website, you can probably find video instructions for resetting it back its factory condition on Youtube. Simply visit Youtube.com and search for your phone’s brand/model followed by the words factory reset.
Important: Since a factory reset will wipe out all of your settings, photos, and other user-created info, you should back up your data if at all possible before initiating the reset.
Note: Although the Reset Hard website refers to the “factory resets” detailed in the site’s videos as “hard resets”, they truly are actually factory resets. The terms “hard reset” and “factory reset” actually refer to two very different types of reset procedures:
1 – A Factory Reset will return your phone to its factory settings, wiping out all of your settings changes and user-created files.
2 – A Hard Reset only resets the hardware in your phone to clear out any temporary glitches.
To reiterate what I said above, although the Reset Hard website uses the term “hard reset”, the instructions provided in the video tutorials actually explain how to perform a factory reset. Therefore, be absolutely certain that you really want to wipe your phone clean and start over from scratch before initiating the reset process detailed in the videos.