5 Crucial checks to make before selling your old phone
When it’s time to change your phone, you can significantly reduce the cost of a new handset by trading in or selling your old device. But before you sell or give away your old smartphone, you should do a few quick and easy checks to ensure you’re keeping all your data with you and not leaving your digital accounts exposed.
The ideal is to have the old and the new phone coexists for a few days until you are sure that everything works well on your new device and that you no longer need the one that has just been replaced. But whatever your situation, do these checks and you should be well protected.
1-Back up everything
No one wants to lose data by switching phones, but with the switch to streaming services, it’s now easier to avoid it. Log into Netflix and Spotify (for example) on your new device and everything will be there, just as you left it.
It’s worth reviewing your critical apps to make sure everything is backed up to the cloud or another device. Think in particular of your precious photos and videos (Apple Photos, Google Photos, or services like Dropbox can take care of this). If you’re using a podcast player, check that you won’t lose your spot or your downloaded episodes.
iPhones and Android phones have built-in backup services that take care of many of these tasks for you: See official Apple and Google support docs for details, but also do your check what’s on your phone and what needs to be transferred.
2-Move your two-factor authentication codes
Using your smartphone as a two-factor authentication device is a smart move: It means other people can’t access your accounts with just your usernames and passwords. However, this added security measure can cause problems when you switch devices.
Indeed, your phone could well be the outlet for accessing all sorts of accounts, from your social media apps to your email clients. If you use an app to generate two-factor codes, you should set it up on your new phone to be sure you can continue to access your accounts without any issues.
How this works varies slightly depending on the two-factor authentication app you’re using; consult it for more details. Apps such as Authy and Google Authenticator offer simple guides for transferring your codes.
3-Log out of your accounts
It’s not strictly necessary for some apps, but it’s a good idea to sign out and disable as many apps as possible before you leave your old phone behind, to make the transition to your next device easier.
Some apps have restrictions on the number of devices you can use them with: music streaming apps, for example, only allow you to download songs to a limited number of gadgets. Also, some paid apps limit the number of possible installs, so you need to undo your old install before adding a new one.
Before you sign out of anything, make sure you know all your passwords: You’ll need them to sign in again. Hopefully, this is a task you’ve handed over to a dedicated password manager, so the transition should be smooth.
4-Transfer your chats
We’ve talked about backup, but it’s good to talk about chat apps separately: Your private conversations are probably very important to you, and you don’t want to leave them behind when you upgrade to a brand new smartphone.
Apps like Twitter, Facebook Messenger, and Google Chat keep everything in the cloud. With Apple iMessage, your conversations are backed up and synced across multiple devices via iCloud. You can use the built-in account transfer feature if you are a Signal user and have both your new and old phone.
The process varies from app to app, but be sure to use the most up-to-date information. WhatsApp is an application whose process is constantly evolving, but now there is a complete chat backup and restore function.
5-Perform a factory reset
Lastly, this is as important as the other things you need to do before you trade in your old device, you need to do a factory reset to get your old smartphone back to the state it was in when you got it – but only after checking everything we mentioned in the list above.
This way you can be sure that no one else can access your accounts or your data because all your files, applications, and identifiers will be transferred and erased: Everything, from the details of the wifi network you have configured at home to the history browsing on your device, including wallpapers you’ve downloaded, is erased from local storage.
On Android, in Settings, select System, Reset options and Erase all data (factory reset) – this is for Pixels, but other Android devices will have similar options. In iOS Settings, select General, Transfer, or Reset iPhone, and Erase All Content and Settings.
