In the modern day world of Smartphones, one common piece of advice is, “Have you done a battery pull?” It’s sort of the same as asking, “Have you tried turning it off and back on again?” Unfortunately, in this same world, more and more manufacturers are tending to build in these batteries so “pulling” them isn’t quite as easy as it once was. That said, getting around a battery pull isn’t all that bad on your Windows Phone device, but when you should do that is probably the more important question.
Let’s start with the three types of resets you can do with your device. The first is the simple power off and power on. This will take care of most common problems like lagging, closing the music player and even smaller issues like that. The second is a soft reset. This will clear bigger issues like a full cache, Live Tile lockups and even sync issues. The final reset is a hard reset, or factory reset. This should only be done when you are at a last resort. This clears the entire content of the device back to the original shape it was in the box when you purchased it. This clears almost any software based issue on the device. Of course, you also lose all of your Apps and App data, though the former is reinstalled automatically if you have your backup software set up in the phone settings.
Taking a quick look at the three options above, it is usually pretty easy to figure out which one to use and when to use it. If your phone is a bit laggy, simply power it off and back on. If you notice that your signal is wonky, power it off and back on. Basically, if the device is responding to touch and the power button, turning it off and back on is the best course of action. If this doesn’t solve the problem, head on to step two as a soft reset won’t do any permanent damage to the device. I recommend power cycling your Windows Phone device about once a week for general health. When compared with my daily recommendation for Android, you can see why I prefer Windows Phone.
Step two, of course, is the “soft reset” method of resetting the device. A soft reset keeps all the hard memory of the device (the ROM or internal storage) but clears the entire soft memory (RAM) for a clean boot. A power cycle should do the same thing, but sometimes the internal battery will keep a few things hanging out that it shouldn’t. This soft reset will keep things neat and clean. This is something you only need to do when the phone starts behaving poorly. It could be random rebooting, earphone jack not outputting sound correctly or even sync issues with your PC.
A soft reset is done by holding both the volume down and power buttons for about 10 seconds. While holding the volume down button, also press the power button. You will see the normal power down screen, but do not drag it down to turn it off. Just continue to hold the volume down and power buttons until the screen goes blank and the phone vibrates. Once the phone has vibrated, you can release the buttons. Your phone has now been soft reset.
The final reset is just that, a last resort. A hard reset to the device will restore the device to a like new condition. It is virtually the same as running that CD or Program to restore you computer back to factory settings. This should only be done when there is a major issue with your device – or you just want to get rid of all the Apps, Games and Emails that your phone has stored on it. Although you SD card contents (if your phone has an SD card in it) are saved, internal memory only phones will also lose their videos, photos and anything else in it. Before you execute a hard reset, make sure to have the entire device backed up, either via PC cable or via SkyDrive – or are we calling it OneDrive yet?
It is a three part selection process to initiate the hard reset with a Windows Phone. First, enter the settings menu. Then click “about phone” and scroll to the bottom of that screen. There you will find the “reset your phone” button. Clicking this will bring up the warning screen. This screen will tell you everything that you are about to erase from your device. Once this is done, there is no way to retrieve all your data. Apps can be restored, most settings will come back when you log in with your Windows Live ID at startup, but many things never come back. This should only be done as a last resort.
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