How do I prepare my smartphone to sell?

[EarthDog]

Ok, so I upgraded my phone (Sammy S20+, and my wife's Note 8) and watch (S3) couple of months back. How do you prepare your phones to sell? Does a simple factory reset take care of things? Do I pull the SIM card? They were used with/bought from Verizon. I know I can't get a ton for these, but some dollars in the pocket sure beat the space they take up and the dust they're collecting, lol.

Same thing for the watch... will a factory reset suffice to get my info out? The watch was only BT connected and not cell.

What do you do before turning in/selling your smartphones/watches? I'm going to imagine there are instructions in google out there, but, curious to see what other people do as well.

 

[Nebulous]

I normally do a factory reset before I sell/trade or giveaway my old-ish smart phones. A factory reset pretty much nukes everything from the previous owner. Never had any issues.

Now a smart watch, never had one of those, so i would think the same rules apply.

Congrats on the new upgrades Joe!

 

[Zerileous]

Make sure it's logged out of i cloud, or samsungs cloud / find my phone feature, factory reset, pull the sim. Some of those (especially apple/sammy) will require a pw even after a factory reset if it's not disabled first.

 

[Janus67]

I'd pull the SIM as well as factory reset. They can get a sim with whatever carrier they move to

 

[don256us]

Agreed. Pull the SIM and do a factory reset. Factory reset is "destructive" meaning that all of your data and updates to the OS will be removed.

 

[RollingThunder]

Ok, so I upgraded my phone (Sammy S20+, and my wife's Note 8) and watch (S3) couple of months back. How do you prepare your phones to sell? Does a simple factory reset take care of things? Do I pull the SIM card? They were used with/bought from Verizon. I know I can't get a ton for these, but some dollars in the pocket sure beat the space they take up and the dust they're collecting, lol.

Same thing for the watch... will a factory reset suffice to get my info out? The watch was only BT connected and not cell.

What do you do before turning in/selling your smartphones/watches? I'm going to imagine there are instructions in google out there, but, curious to see what other people do as well.

Joe,

I have a somewhat different approach. I take mine to the rifle range and put a .30-06 AP round through it.

 

[EarthDog]

Joe,

I have a somewhat different approach. I take mine to the rifle range and put a .30-06 AP round through it.

That's funny, but can't say I can sell them after that.

 

[don256us]

That's funny, but can't say I can sell them after that.

I agree with you in theory however, you could still sell it. I just think it would be at a much lower price and a smaller market.

 

[EarthDog]

I agree with you in theory however, you could still sell it. I just think it would be at a much lower price and a smaller market.

... defO trying to get the most $ (not fun!) out of these devices.

 

[Cvsi3]

Once you get everything reset. Log into google from another device and look in the settings for logged in devices, and remove it.
Thats what samsung had me do when i traded in my old phone with them. If you don't do that, it will be locked to your account, or would only be able to be logged in
under your account. Even after a factory reset.

 

[dfonda]

Joe,

I have a somewhat different approach. I take mine to the rifle range and put a .30-06 AP round through it.

I hope you toss it high in the air first...Give the device a sporting chance...

 

[unsafesteagle]

I setup a low cost phone , activated it first time by WiFi.
Phone kept doing a random factory reset , many times over.
After 2 1/2 weeks , learned it needed activated the first time by the prepaid carriers tower/signal.
Still had to redo a complete factory install from scratch followed by a manual removal of my Google account on the phone itself.
At that point the reset protection was disabled and could finally activate the phone by the carriers tower.