How to wipe Android phone?

[EvilYoda]

So I'm selling my old phone to a member here and am wondering what the procedure is to properly wipe my phone before shipping it out. It's rooted and running custom recovery.

 

[isekii]

Reinstall a fresh rom preferable stock

 

[shortylickens]

Or just use factory reset. You should still be able to find that, right?
Of course the phone will always be rooted forever.

 

[WelshBloke]

Does the buyer want it rooted and with a custom recovery?

What phone btw?

 

[EvilYoda]

Samsung S2 Skyrocket, and he's aware that it's rooted and will be running a ROM/custom recovery.

I spent last night deleting pictures and music and anything else I could find laying around on the phone. Hopefully that's enough.

 

[shabby]

Go into recovery, factory reset, it'll delete everything.

 

[Bateluer]

Samsung S2 Skyrocket, and he's aware that it's rooted and will be running a ROM/custom recovery.

I spent last night deleting pictures and music and anything else I could find laying around on the phone. Hopefully that's enough.

The custom recovery should have an option for Factory Reset, as should the ROM. Simply deleting your photos and such and deleting your Google account isn't going to cut it.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

The custom recovery should have an option for Factory Reset, as should the ROM. Simply deleting your photos and such and deleting your Google account isn't going to cut it.

Doesn't that still leave /system intact?

An S2 can use Odin which means you can wipe all those partitions and start over.

 

[EvilYoda]

I meant that deleting the photos/music/etc was just a first step...been a while since I've installed a new ROM and it's so routine by now that I don't even remember what each step is named. The reason I say that is: don't you "wipe data/factory reset" every time for a fresh install? In which case, if that's what I've been doing, all of my photos and music have carried over.

I'll mess around with it tomorrow and figure things out one way or another.

 

[vshah]

wipe data in most recoveries doesn't wipe the storage partition or the sdcard/virtual sdcard partition. that's why your media remained across wipes.

 

[darkewaffle]

Can't you just wipe it with, like, a cloth?

 

[s44]

The custom recovery should offer various degrees of wiping. But really you should ask what the buyer wants. If you Odin to stock and make it hard/impossible to root, that's not a good thing.

 

[Bateluer]

wipe data in most recoveries doesn't wipe the storage partition or the sdcard/virtual sdcard partition. that's why your media remained across wipes.

Correct. I haven't had an SD card in my phone for a while now, but you'll have to remove or format the SD card before you sell it. You can format it from Android though.

 

[razel]

Last time we cleared a phone, we just filled it with p0rn and then did a factory reset.

 

[Crono]

Encrypt phone and SD card (options are in Settings->Storage) and then factory reset. You can also securely erase and format a microSD card in Windows or any other desktop OS if you have an adapter and card reader.