What 10 Things To Do Before Selling Your Mobile Phone

Here, we are listing 10 things that are must to do before selling your mobile phone to someone else:

1) Back up your Mobile Phone

It is very important to back up your phone so that there is no loss of your data and so that you have a perfect copy of all the things that were once stored in your old mobile phone. It helps you keep your data secure so that it can be transferred back to your new mobile phone. This is a mandatory and the most important move before selling in your phone.

 IPhone, users can tap into settings, then iCloud, and then should select Backup and Storage. If their iCloud backup is disabled, they should enable it quick to have a complete backup of their data.

 On the other hand, Android users can either back up their data into their Google account, or can just plug in their phone to a laptop or a drive to copy all the contents of their phone and thus keep all the data secure and safe.

 2) Encrypt your Data

Encryption is referred to as conversion of all your data and information in specific codes which are unreadable from outside without a special encryption key, and thus it makes your data safe from outside hosts and devices. It is very important to encrypt your data before selling, so that is makes the data unreadable from the outside without your specific key. It makes your data safe and much more secure.

 Android users must enable the encryption mode in their phones by tapping into Settings section and then Security and enabling “Encrypt Device” which enables encryption and can take time as well.

However, IPhones, users are at an advantage in this case as their phone is by default encrypted and thus a lot more secure than Android mobile phones.

3) Perform a factory reset

Even though you have performed a complete backup of all your data and even encrypted all the information that your phone contained, you should remove all the data and information from the phone personally to avoid leakage of data and personal information to strangers and outsiders which can be very dangerous as that information can be used to extort you in the future.

 Also, I understand that even though deleting the photos and documents personally can be more satisfying, but it is always recommended to perform a complete factory reset of the phone to delete any possible information that the mobile phone might store or contain and to completely wipe off the information to be safer.

 For factory data reset option, users got to again move in Settings section and select the option which will perform the task of removing all the data which can be later restored to factory outlets which were done at the time of purchase.

4) Remove any Sim cards or SD cards

Always remove your Sim card or any SD card that you might be using in that mobile phone before selling the phone to a different person. It makes the data safer and the buyer won’t be getting access into your personal space, which he/she might get if the sim card or SD card is still in the phone.

Nowadays, it is easy to pull off the sim card, or you can use your manual if you are unaware how to do it and Android users especially should take out any SD card that they might have inserted to expand the mobile phone’s memory space. This is an important thing to be done before selling.

5) Always clean your phone

People tend to buy stuff and material which are intact and in place, that is material which is fine and not broken and if it then it should be repairable at a cheap cost.

So to make sure, that your phone is bought by someone else, you have to make sure that it looks fine and clear by appearance and in a condition where people can buy and use it because no one will be willing to buy a phone which is broken or not working, and they will rather prefer to buy a new phone over a second hand phone.

 So, clean your mobile phone’s screen with cleaner, wipe it off properly and make the appearance look attractive, wipe off all the dust so that you have customers to buy, and you don’t dry out still hanging and also because it is humane to do this.

6) Unenroll from Android Beta(optional)

It is an important thing that needs to be done by people if they are enrolled in the Android Beta program. This option is not mandatory for everyone, but for those specific group of people who have enroll into Beta program. These people need to unenrolled from that program because enrolling to Beta program is nowhere linked to your Google account as most of the things are, instead it is totally a device linked thing.

 There are primarily 2 reasons why you should enroll it before selling which are:

First, If you don’t unenroll it will remain logged in your device and your new buyer may take advantage of that or may not like that which can be problematic and the second is that if you enroll the Beta program after selling, it will perform a complete automatic reset of all the data that is contained in the phone which can be a problem for the new owner thus loss of data of some other person. Thus, it is very important for people to enroll Beta program before selling. It is a must, must action.

 7) Deactivate your phone from your wireless carrier

An important step before selling your phone or even messing around in terms of backup or encryption is to deactivate your phone from your wireless carrier. This would mean giving up the ownership of that number. While we can always reactivate a CDMA device after deactivating with a new number, but we cannot reactivate a GSM sim card so, we need to look out for what kind of sim card are we using because in cases of GSM cards, we directly transfer the number from one device to another, but otherwise it causes a little problem.

 If you forget to do this step and deactivate the phone from your carrier, your new buyer/ customer won’t be able to reactivate your phone if he/she wants to do it. To avoid unnecessary headaches, it is recommended to perform this step before selling.

8) Include/Remove spare accessories

You cannot sell your phone with zero accessories with it, especially the ones which originally came up with the mobile phone which are the stock accessories like the headset, charger, manual (if the buyer needs) or various other things unless it is beforehand mentioned to the buyer that you won’t provide them which is never the case as you have to give them the complete set of phone, or it will be difficult for them to operate it otherwise and might have to spend extra on the accessories. So, include all the mandatory accessories and also remove the extra accessories that you might have added to improve its features like aftermarket batteries and more.

 9) Disable factory reset protection

One should remove their account from the phone to keep their phone safe and secure and to protect all their personal data. And even to disable the option of factory reset protection, you have to remove your Google accounts from the phone. You can go into Settings and then Accounts and Sync and there you can tap into removing your account and then disabling this feature and the option.

10) Look for profits