When you tap delete on your Android phone, a file might disappear from your view. But it's not really gone. You've erased the index of that file, but the file itself is still in the phone's storage.

Whether you’re planning to upgrade to the new iPhone or are experiencing some problems with your current model, knowing how to restart iOS from scratch is a tool you need in your wheelhouse. If it’s ...

When you need to sell your iPhone, or fix persistent problems, resetting it to the state it was when it came from the factory, can help. Here's how to do it — and what you should do first. If you're ...

You bought a smartphone so it could become your external brain, filled with all the phone numbers, links, contacts, and data you don’t really want–or need–to keep in your head. So why would you want ...

John is a professional author, currently publishing evergreen and feature articles for Android Police. He discovered his passion for writing when he was very young, and enjoys how it challenges him ...

Almost 50% of American smartphone users have an iPhone, according to Statista. We are long past the time when phones were used only to make calls. Text messages, photos, videos, music, emails and ...

ChromeOS is a lightweight operating system that stores all data mainly in the cloud. There are hardly any locally stored files, with the exception of data from Android apps and Linux apps. These apps ...

Whether you've run into technical glitches on your phone, or you've sold it and want to make sure the new owner can't access your data, a factory reset is a useful trick to know. Here's what you ...

Since its launch in November 2013, Sony’s flagship games machine has seen various wrinkles in its performance, with gamers reporting anything from freezing, issues with movie playback, and poor gaming ...

To perform a hard reset on the Nook tablet, you first must access the Factory Reset screen. A factory reset, also known as a hard reset, deregisters your device with Amazon and wipes all data from the ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Davey Winder is a veteran cybersecurity writer, hacker and analyst. This article is more than 3 years old. A full factory reset is ...