How to Back Up Your iPhone and Complete a Full Factory Reset Before Selling

If you’re planning on selling your old iPhone, you’ll need to make sure all your important information is taken off and kept safe elsewhere. You’ll also need to make sure your phone is wiped clean before passing it onto someone else to use.

Doing a factory restore can save both you and your phone’s buyer a lot of hassle. Not only will you be protecting your personal and private information, but the buyer will not have to contact you in order to wipe the phone of your details before they can use it.

**If you would also like to increase the value of your iPhone before you sell it, it’s worth unlocking it with a sim unlock service so that it can be used with any carrier sim card, Mobile Unlocked have an iPhone unlocking service online here.

How Do I Back-up My Phone?

Backing up your iPhone – basically making a copy of the information and keeping it safe elsewhere - should be simple and quick to do. It is advisable to back your phone up often so your backup information is:

• Always up to date
• Still available if your phone is lost or stolen

Remember, when you back up your phone it isn’t just your contacts, photos and apps that are remembered. It’s also the personal settings you have; this includes all the little setting adjustments you’ve made, personalised ringtones, your fingerprint/Touch ID… there are a lot of tiny details that will be remembered with a phone back-up. This means that you wont have to painstakingly do it all over again on your new phone.

There are two main ways you can back up your information – with iTunes or with iCloud.

Backing Up with iTunes

If you regularly use iTunes, you can easily back up your phone.

1. Connect your iPhone to your computer
2. Open Finder/iTunes
3. You will need to put in your passcode and will likely need to vouch for whether or not you ‘trust this computer’. Follow the onscreen steps. Contact Apple Help if you have forgotten your passcode.
4. Click ‘Find my Device’ if it doesn’t automatically appear.
5. Click ‘Backup Now’ in the bottom right hand side of the screen. You will need a password to access this backup information so make sure you write this down and keep it somewhere safe.
6. If the backup is successful, you will see the date and time of the last backup update itself to today.

Backing Up with iCloud

To backup your information with iCloud, simply:

1. Connect your device to a Wi-Fi carrier
2. Click ‘setting’ > ‘[your name]’ > ‘iCloud’
3. Click ‘iCloud backup’
4. Click ‘backup now’

You will need to remain connected to the Wi-Fi while your phone backs up.

You can also set your settings so your device automatically backs itself up:

1. Click ‘settings’ > ‘[your name]’ > ‘iCloud’ > ‘turn on iCloud backup’
2. Connect your phone to its charger
3. Connect to the Wi-Fi
4. Lock the screen

Don’t forget to regularly check the space on your iCloud as it can soon fill up. 5GB is free and if you need more you can buy extra from your Apple device.

What is a Factory Reset?

A “factory restore/reset” is a built-in feature that uses software to erase all the information and settings you have on your phone’s internal memory. It is called a ‘factory reset’ because the phone is being set back to the settings it had straight out the factory; basically, it resets the phone to its original pre-use settings.

A factory restore needs to be done to any phone you want to sell on so the buyer is able to put their own information onto the phone. Factory resets are also handy when the phone has major operating system issues or other errors.

How Do I Do a Factory Reset?

To complete a full factory reset on your device:

1. Connect your device to your computer
2. Open iTunes
3. You may be asked for a passcode, or you will be asked whether you ‘trust this computer’. Click yes and proceed to follow the on-screen steps.
4. Your iPhone should be recognised by your computer. If it isn’t, you may need to force a restart.
5. Click on your iPhone when it has been recognised
6. Click on the blue ‘restore iPhone’ tab in the centre of the screen. ONLY click this tab if you are 100% sure you are happy to erase all the information from your phone and for it to install the latest iOS software
7. When the process is complete, your phone will restart itself

How to Force a Restart

If your phone is not recognised in iTunes, you may need to force your phone to restart. All phones have different methods for forcing a restart. For iPhone 8 and later, simply:

• Click the Volume Up button
• Click the Volume Down button
• Press and hold the side button until you see the Apple logo

For iPhone 7, you need to:

• Click and hold down the side button and the Volume Down button until you see the Apple logo

For iPhone 6 and earlier you need to:

• Click and hold the home button and the top/or side buttons simultaneously until you see the Apple logo

Retrieving Your Saved & Stored Information

When you’ve bought a new phone, you can access all your saved and stored information on your iCloud or iTunes.

To do this, you must connect your new phone to the Wi-Fi and input your details (including your iCloud passcode).

You will see that most of your stored information will begin to install itself automatically. If your phone is unable to download the specific version of the app you last had, it will install the latest version.

You can check to see if your information has been fully restored by tapping the iPhone settings button > [your name] > iCloud > iCloud backup. You may see the message ‘this iPhone is currently being restored’. This means the process is not yet finished. Be patient – it may take a few minutes.