This guide explains what you need to know and do before selling your Galaxy S8 or Galaxy S8+. Before you get rid of it, we’ll show you how to backup your data, save photos, and then reset or wipe your phone. Basically, we are restoring the Galaxy S8 to its factory settings.
With powerful devices like a stunning new Galaxy S10 or the current Galaxy Note 9, many Galaxy S8 owners are upgrading. Whether you sell or trade, you’re going to want to delete everything.
There is a lot of important information on our phones that we don’t want to fall into the wrong hands. Personal or not. Don’t accidentally sell your Galaxy S8 to a stranger without removing your Google account and all your stuff. Resetting your phone is easier than you think. It only takes a few minutes to follow our steps below.
How to Prepare Your Galaxy S8 for Sale
Backup your Galaxy S8 and Data
The first thing you will want to do is back up all your information. If you already have a new phone, this process is extremely easy. Especially if you have a new Galaxy, Samsung’s SmartSwitch app does it all for you. It literally transfers everything from the old phone to the new one.
Open the Samsung app on both phones, connect the two with a USB cable as shown in the onscreen instructions and go. It does everything for you and only takes a few minutes.
If you don’t have a new phone yet, you can use the PC or Mac version to back up your entire phone to a computer. So everything is ready for later. Even if you use Samsung Cloud Backup, I still recommend having a physical copy on a PC.
You can also use the company’s information. Samsung Cloud solution to backup your data. To access it, your device’s . Choose Samsung, not Google. If you do not have a Samsung account, you must create one. The cloud is the easiest way, but perhaps not the safest.
Once you’ve saved all your stuff, go ahead and remove your microSD card, sign out of your Samsung account, then wipe your phone so it’s ready for the next contact. Similar to reformatting a hard drive on a computer, you can do a “Factory Data Reset” on Android phones and it’s really easy.
This is the next step and returns it to its original factory state. Basically, whatever the day you get it.
As you probably noticed, this screen gives you a list of every account, app or service connected to your Galaxy S8. You don’t need to log out of each one as the reset does all the work for you. Tap the final blue “Reset” button and you’ll need to verify it’s you with a pin or password and we’re done.
The phone will reboot, enter maintenance mode and wipe everything, then reboot in a few minutes. Don’t worry about anything you see on the screen during this process. When opened, it will look just like the day you bought it. It asks you to add a Gmail account and set everything up.
You have successfully backed up your information and safely erased your Galaxy S8. It is now ready for its new owner. You don’t need to do anything else.
Go ahead and trade in or sell to save for the fancy Galaxy S10.
