Is it time to clear your Android smartphone? Maybe you want to sell it or give it away to someone. The smartest thing to do is wipe Android devices clean and get it back to factory settings. But did you know a traditional factory data reset won’t take care of the job 100%?
Much of your personal data will survive a wipe, but it will pretty much be hidden. Regardless, there are plenty of tools out there that would allow any new owner (or thief) to easily retrieve this information. In this post we show you how to really take care of the situation. Wipe Android devices can make sure all your sensitive information is safe from sneaky tinkerers.
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I have a few photos on my Android phone internal memory. How can I delete them without clearing off the entire internal memory? I have already emailed the photos to myself and saved them on my PC so my photos are in a safe place but because my internal memory is so small I would like to now delete them from the internal memory to give my phone. Better solution: get more space for the internal memory. When the Android space is running out, you can use the above methods to free up space without deleting apps, or you can also try to increase internal memory storage of Android. That is to say, add a MicroSD card to your Android device and move some apps or large files to the SD card.
Understanding how storage is handled
Not with apps, but with 'System Memory'. The device only has 8 GB of storage, and about 48%+ of that (3.3 GB) is used by System Memory. Well, apps fill 4 GB, but that is why I have removed about 20% of the system apps (like Google, Hangouts, and many more). If the file is saved on internal storage, you can also ask the Context to locate and delete a file by calling deleteFile: myContext.deleteFile(fileName); Note: When the user uninstalls your app, the Android system deletes the following: All files you saved on internal storage All files you saved on external storage using getExternalFilesDir. Adobe photoshop for mac serial number.
Surely, you have seen all these services and programs that promise to recover lost data. This is totally possible, and it’s because of the way most operating systems (including Android) handle storage.
No file is ever really gone when you hit the ‘delete’ button. It just becomes invisible to the user and marked as “free space”. Then it is left chilling in the background until the system needs the space again. New files then replace the older ones.
Why even do this? There are a few reasons why this method is convenient. For starters, truly deleting documents from a drive can take a toll on the hardware. Remember HDDs and even SSDs have an estimated lifespan, and after so many rewrites they wear out. By marking a file as “deleted” but not removing it completely, you reduce the amount of times modifications have to be made.
In addition, slower hardware really used to benefit from this. This is because it was much faster to mark a bunch of files as invisible, as opposed to actually deleting them. Storage is super fast these days, but it probably still helps a bit. Plus, this happens to be a life saver those times when you accidentally delete valuable data.
How to properly wipe an Android phone
There’s no direct way to really wipe a device all the way, but we can show you how to at least keep your important data safe. Let’s get started.
Best Memory Cleaner For Android
Encrypt your phone
If all your stuff is going to stay within your storage after a factory data reset, you should at least make sure no one can take advantage of it. Encrypting your device won’t stop the software from going through it’s usual deleting process, but any information retrieved from the device will be scrambled. People won’t be able to do a thing with it.
Simply go to the Settings app and select ‘Security’. From there you can scroll down and hit the “Encrypt phone” option. It’s super simple. But beware that steps may vary a bit depending on your phone. These steps are for stock android Marshmallow.
Once your phone is encrypted, simply perform a factory data reset the way you normally would to wipe Android devices.
Load the phone with trivial files
Clean Up Android Phone Internal Memory
Still want to get rid of all that personal information stored deep within the guts of the phone? It will only be deleted once it is replaced with other files, so the solution is simple. Just load a bunch of files in there! Latest java for mac os x.
Pro desktop for mac. Of course, you want these to be files that don’t matter. Or at least stuff you wouldn’t mind others getting a hold of. These could be songs, movies, photos or anything. Just fill up your smartphone’s storage as much as possible. After that, perform another factory data reset and intruders will only be able to retrieve the dummy data.
Wrapping up
Clean Internal Memory Android
As we mentioned above, this is more a workaround than it is a solution. This is the closest we can get to wipe Android devices clean… without going too crazy. How else would you keep your private information safe? Hit the comments and let us know.