Flashing Your Device

No, this doesn’t involve wearing a long jacket with nothing underneath before revealing yourself to your device. This is the “advanced” method for resetting your device software to lemony fresh goodness. Seeing as this is the “advanced” method, we’ll assume that you’ve either already backed up your phone (as per Step 1 of the Basic method) or are completely willing to spend some time after with your head in your hands wondering why you didn’t back up.

Step 1

Depending on phone manufacturer, you’ll need to find out the key combination specific to your manufacturer (or device). For Samsung devices, this is typically VolumeUp+Home+Power. For HTC devices, this is typically VolumeDown+Power, followed by using the VolumeUp/Down keys to navigate to Recovery Mode and tapping the Power key to select. You’ll probably need to become a little more acquainted with Google to figure out the key combinations for other manufacturers.

Samsung S3/S4: VolumeUp+Home+Power
HTC One: VolumeDown+Power
Google Nexus 4: VolumeDown+Power
Step 2

Once in recovery mode, navigate to Wipe Data/Factory Reset and select that with whichever the select key is for your device (usually Home or Power). Your phone will now appear to do absolutely nothing except display some spinning graphics or something similar for a few minutes before exclaiming that it has completed the wipe. For the slightly more paranoid among us, you’ll also want to select the Wipe Cache option, which will result in a few more seconds of spinning graphics.

Step 3

At this point, select Reboot System. Congratulations, you should have a device that looks exactly like one that was just removed from a factory line-up (minus physical injuries your device may have picked up while under your care).