Reset your /e/phone to Factory Settings

eOSWiki HOWTOs
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Mission:

Learn to factory reset your smartphone running /e/OS

Pro tip: It is advised that you factory reset your smartphone before selling it.

Prerequisites:

  • A phone with /e/OS

Let’s roll.

Before we continue, this is NOT something that you want to do unless asked owing to system critical bug. Performing a factory reset on your /e/ phone will delete all your phone data that is locally stored and not uploaded to the /e/cloud. Backups are vital.

  1. Open /e/OS Settings and scroll down most to open System settings

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  1. In System settings, tap 'Advanced’ to open 'Reset options’ therein.

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In ‘Reset options’, tap ‘Erase all data (factory reset)’ to continue.

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Scroll down to go through the list of your accounts to activate the Reset button.

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Tap ‘Reset phone’ to continue.

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You will be asked to ‘Enter your device password’ manually to continue the process. Once done, your device will reboot to wipe the phone storage and all data therein.

Upon reboot, you will be presented with a factory new /e/OS setup for you to configure from beginning.

Note: ‘Factory Reset’ only wipes phone’s internal data/cache. It does NOT cover the SD card unless mounted as internal storage. Make sure you handle it separately.

Regain your privacy! Adopt /e/ the unGoogled mobile OS and online servicesphone

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Adding a note as requested by dev team:

Pl note a Factory Reset will not delete the images stored on the device. You will have to get into TWRP and wipe user data as well.
There is an issue open on this in Gitlab which you can refer for more details.

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Hi Manoj, slightly off topic but I am selling my e phone (Samsung Galaxy S9+) and I want to restore it to the stock rom from samsung. I followed the install guide and I think this left the samsung rom on the device (perhaps accessible by TWRP?). Is there a HowTo/FAQ on this? I haven’t been able to find one anywhere so far, except for reinstalling a standard ROM as a new install, but as I mentioned, I think the samsung ROM is left in place for recovery purposes, after /e/ is installed. Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Jonny

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Hi, I want to factory reset my S7 edge from the /e/store (including data such as photos, documents etc). My intention is to start fresh afterwards with the latest /e/ version to which I updated a while ago.

I have read this “how to” and also the issue in Gitlab regarding the fact that the “Factory reset” is not deleting images stored on the device. The suggestion is to use TWRP to do the factory reset.

As I am not so experienced with TWRP, does this mean, that I go to TWRP > Factory Reset > Advanced wipe and then select “Data”, “Cache”, “Dalvik” PLUS Internal Storage (plus if wanted also “Micro SD card”)?

Thanks for a confirmation (or correction) which would make me feel much more comfortable doing this :wink:

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Some other info here

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Here is Advanced wipe in TWRP in action!

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which /e/ version would your phone revert to once factory reset has been initiated?

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An Android so-called factory reset doesn’t touch the installed OS, it just wipes the data partition (containing user data as well as Apps installed by the user and their data) and the cache partition, as mentioned in the opening post.
Afterwards, the same installed OS version will present the initial setup again.

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