How to Securely Erase Your Android Phone Before Disposal

Follow these steps to permanently wipe your Android phone's data, sign out of accounts, and restore factory settings before selling or recycling.

1. Confirm your data backup. Navigate to Settings, select System, and tap Backup. Ensure your photos, contacts, and app data are synced to your Google Drive account before proceeding to prevent permanent data loss.
2. Remove your Google account. Go to Settings, select Passwords & accounts, and tap on your Google account. Select Remove account to disable Factory Reset Protection (FRP), which prevents the device from locking to your identity after the wipe.
3. Verify device encryption. On modern Android versions, encryption is enabled by default. Confirm this by navigating to Settings, Security & privacy, and checking the Device unlock status to ensure all user data is cryptographically protected.
4. Initiate the factory reset. Navigate to Settings, select System, and tap Reset options. Select Erase all data (factory reset) and confirm your device PIN when prompted to authorize the final wipe.
5. Finalize the erasure. Tap Erase all data on the final confirmation screen. The device will restart and perform a secure overwrite of the storage partition, returning the system to its initial out-of-box state.