What to Do before Selling your Phone

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  • Post last modified:April 11, 2023
  • Reading time:23 mins read

You may be thinking about getting a new phone, or you just want to give your phone away. Whatever the case may be, making sure you don’t get your private information in the hands of someone else should be a major concern.

Basically, the best things to do before giving away or selling your phone are backing up the important stuff you want on the phone and then resetting the phone. If you want to know how to do these, read on.

Backing up the phone will save you from losing a lot of important stuff while erasing the phone will make sure said important stuff does not fall in the wrong hands.

If you’re already wondering how to do it, don’t worry, Shaibu is here to help you out.

What you’ll need:

  • Somewhere to keep your backed up files (like a computer or another phone).
  • This Super Backup App (click here to download it from the Play Store).
  • Some patience lol.

HOW TO BACKUP YOUR ANDROID PHONE

To back up your phone, you’ll be using the Super Backup and Restore application. Once you’ve downloaded and installed it, launch the app and follow these instructions.

HOW TO BACKUP YOUR ANDROID APPLICATIONS

If you wish to back up some apps, after launching the Super Backup and Restore application, tap “Apps”, a new screen will be opened.

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Here you can choose all the applications you wish to keep so you can install them on the new phone you’re getting.

To do this, you’ll need to tap the checkboxes on the right side of each app to select the apps you want to keep.

Super Backup and Restore App 4

After you’re done selecting them, hit the “backup” button at the bottom of the screen and your selected apps will be backed up.

What to note here is that you are only backing up the application. What I mean is, if you’re backing up a game with this method, you are going to have to start the game from the beginning when you install it on a new phone.

Same thing goes for apps.

So unless you play all your games online and have them automatically backed up and synced with your Google account, chances are you will be starting afresh.

If your phone is rooted, Super Backup and Restore will save your progress as it backs up the applications you’ve selected. But the new phone you’ll be getting will have to be rooted too in order to restore the data.

Chances are, your new phone will not be rooted, so that’s that.

I would suggest backing up the Super Backup app as well just so you don’t have to download it again when you get a new phone.

So, after you are done selecting and backing up the apps you want, a new folder will be created on your internal storage (by default, all backups are saved on your phone’s internal storage, but you can change the storage location to your microSD card if you wish).

The name of the folder will be “SmsContactsBackup”.

To find it, just open your File Manager app, tap Internal Storage, and scroll through till you find the “SmsContactsBackup” folder.

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What you need to do next is move the folder to your computer, your Google Drive or another phone for safe keeping till when you need it.

HOW TO RESTORE YOUR BACKED UP ANDROID APPLICATIONS

To restore your backed up apps, you should send the “SmsContactsBackup” folder to internal storage of the new device, open up the folder and tap “apks”.

You will find all your backed up applications there, and then you can install them one by one.

Alternatively, for those with rooted devices, you can start by installing the already backed up Super Backup and Restore application (non-rooted users can also do it this way). 

Launch the app when it’s done installing and then tap “Apps”.

You should see an “Archived” section, open it up and you’ll find your backed up apps.

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Choose the ones you wish to restore by tapping the checkbox on the right each app has and then tap “install”.

This method includes your saved progress as you restore (non-rooted phones will not have their progress restored).

HOW TO BACKUP TEXT MESSAGES ON YOUR ANDROID PHONE

Maybe I should have started with this since texts are very important these days. Well, better late than never right?

Okay, so to back up your text messages, first thing’s first, make sure you have the Super Backup and Restore application installed on your phone (click here to download it from the Play Store).

Open it up and tap “SMS”. You should be greeted with a screen that has a lot of options.

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The only option you should be concerned with is the “Backup All” option. Tap it, you should see a new box with some numbers that ends with “.xml” don’t worry about the numbers and just select “OK”.

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Your text messages should be backed up under a few seconds in the XML file.

To find the file, launch your File Manager application, and check your internal storage for the “SMSContactsBackup” folder. Inside it, you’ll find the “sms” folder, open it and you will see the xml file that has all your text messages.

HOW TO RESTORE BACKED UP TEXT MESSAGES ON YOUR ANDROID PHONE

Unlike restoring apps, you will need the Super Backup app in order to restore your text messages.

So make sure you have the app installed and a copy of the “SMSContactsBackup” folder on the new device you wish to restore your text messages on.

Also ensure the XML file that holds all your messages exists in the “sms” folder.

Once you’re sure you have everything, launch the Super Backup app and tap SMS, from there, tap “Restore”.

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You will be asked if you want Super Backup to be your default SMS app. Select “Yes” (this just gives the app the permission to restore all your messages and it’s temporary).

Now, the folder for sms will be opened, you will find the xml file that contains all your messages. Tap the little circle on the right of it and it will automatically restore all your messages.

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Once it’s done, you can open your text messaging app and you will find all your messages there.

HOW TO BACKUP CONTACTS ON ANDROID PHONE

You probably won’t need to manually back up your contacts on an Android phone. This is because Google automatically does this when you’re logged in.

So if you get a new device and sign in with your Google account, your contacts are going to get automatically restored.

But I know a few people who don’t know a lot about synchronization or have a Gmail account (hi dad!) So well, here we go.

So for backing up your contacts, you’re going to need the app I’ve told you guys to download earlier. When you have the app installed on your phone (the phone you wish to sell), open it up and tap “Contacts”.

Super Backup and Restore App contacts

Once you tap contacts, a new screen will pop up, and just like the text messaging way, tap “Backup All”. When you do that you’ll get a box asking you to give a name for the vcf file that will hold all the contacts you have on your phone.

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If you wish to give it a name, you can, but chances are, this will be the only file you’ll have after backing up so I don’t think you have to rename it.

Okay, so after renaming (or not), hit “ok”. After some time, all your contacts will be saved in the vcf file.

To view the file, launch your file manager, go to your internal storage and look for the folder named “SmsContactsBackup”.

When you find it, tap on it and you’ll find the “contacts” folder, open it up and you’ll find the vcf file that holds a list of all the contacts you have.

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Once you’re sure the vcf file is on your phone, get a copy of the SmsContactsBackup folder sent to your computer, Google drive, another phone etc. Just get it somewhere else that you can retrieve it from when you’re ready to get it restored on your new phone.

HOW TO RESTORE BACKED UP CONTACTS ON ANDROID

Restoring your contacts can be done without having the Super Backup app installed on your phone, but make sure you have the “SmsContactsBackup” folder copied to your new phone’s internal storage.

The folder should also have another folder named “contacts” and the contacts folder should have a file that ends with “.vcf”.

Once you’re sure you have the file, just tap on it. A box should show up asking you to choose what to do with the file.

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Hit “Contacts”, select “just once” and choose if you want your contacts to be saved on your phone or on your Google account.

Chances are you will be offline while doing this so tap “Device” or “Phone” and your phone will restore all your contacts.

You can also restore your contacts with the Super Backup app.

If you followed and understood how to restore your text messages, this shouldn’t be a problem.

Only difference here is once you launch the app, instead of tapping SMS, this time you’ll tap “Contacts”. Piece of cake right?

BACKING UP OTHER THINGS WITH SUPER BACKUP APP ON ANDROID

I usually don’t backup my Call Logs, but I know some people out there will want to. So, you can do that using the Super Backup app. It can be done just the way you back up your SMS or Contacts.

Restoring them requires the app installed on your new phone.

super backup call log

You can also back up your Calendar, but as long as you’re signed into you Google account on your phone, you won’t need to manually back it up. Google saves all your calendar events and restores them when you sign into a new device.

super backup calendar

THINGS YOU SHOULD BACK UP WITHOUT USING SUPER BACKUP

Well, from here on, you’ll just have to choose what you want to keep. What I’ll suggest you do is save your pictures and videos somewhere else.

For those of you on WhatsApp, well, if you don’t have WhatsApp automatically sending all your backups to your Google Drive, I’ll suggest you copy the “WhatsApp” folder you have on your internal storage somewhere else.

Once you get a new phone, send the folder to the new phone’s internal storage before you install the WhatsApp app on your phone.

whatsapp folder

You can go through your phone’s internal storage and find all the things you wish to keep. Might take a while to get all of them but it’s better to take the time to look for them.

Cause once you reset your phone, getting them back isn’t something I can promise you will be possible.

Okay so with the steps above you should be done backing up, always remember to send the files somewhere else after you back up.

Now the next thing to do is reset the phone.

HOW TO RESET YOUR ANDROID PHONE

Resetting your Android phone is not as difficult as backing it up. To reset your Android phone, make sure you follow these instructions.

First of all, get to the Settings option on your phone and then look for “Accounts”. Once found, tap to open it. You should see a list of accounts that have been signed into on the device.

settings account
accounts

Tap on each of them and tap the “Remove Account” button.

remove accounts

Taking this step is not needed on some phones. But some phones still save your account details even after resetting. You wouldn’t want the new owner of the phone to be “stuck” with your account.

Okay so when you are done removing all your accounts, go back to your phone’s settings and look for “Reset”.

Most recent Android phones come with a search bar on the settings screen so you can just type “reset” there and you will find it.

If yours doesn’t come with a search bar, well here are a two places that I know of you could try looking for it:

  • Go to Settings > System > Reset Options
  • Go to Settings > Backup & Reset

If you find it, look for “Factory data reset” and tap it, from there, tap “Reset Phone”. If there are any more confirmations beyond that, allow them.

settings factory reset
reset phone

After a while the phone should be done resetting and all your installed apps and texts, pictures, videos etc. will be gone.

So, now we just need some finishing touches before we can say the phone is “good to go”. Make sure you remove your microSD card if the phone comes with one, and your SIM cards.

You would be surprised to know how many people forget this step.

CONCLUSION

Well, then, congratulations, you are now ready to give your phone away knowing that you can get most of all your stuff back when you get a new phone.

Also, you don’t have to worry about people getting any of your personal info.

If you found this article helpful, let me know in the comments and if you have any requests, let me know in the comments as well.

Don’t forget to follow me on all my Socials “@shustechs” so you can stay in touch with me.

So until next time, stay awesome.