It's worth resetting your Android

Tech Talk Android
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Noticed my Samsung had stopped getting Google Play system updates. It was stuck on January. Tried a few suggestions, deleting app caches and stuff, still stuck.

So backed up and reset, didn’t restore backup but set it up as a new phone and added apps as I used it. Took a few days to get everything I use back.

Things I learnt…

  • I almost did a @JasonHowell . Had 2FA enabled for Bitwarden, and for some reason, the MS Authenticator restore from backup option was missing, so lost the ability to generate 2FA codes. Luckily I found the Bitwarden backup code I’d printed and put in the safe. Reddit I’ve lost access as I wasn’t logged in anywhere, so couldn’t turn off 2FA. Everything else I could use backup codes or turn off 2FA. Could have been much worse.

  • Now have a nice clean install with just the apps I use.

  • Phone is quicker.

  • The Google Play updates now work.

  • Now got some new features. Screen captures is different, fingerprint setup and reader is improved and much more reliable, different Samsung Pay with more features. Quite a few small updates I was missing. I guess some Samsung updates had a dependency on the Google Play updates.

So worth doing now and again IMO, just be careful with 2FA.

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Took me a couple of yrs many years ago to get myself comfortable with wiping my device without notice. It’s nice having clean install

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Yep, it’s pretty painless now. Windows PC is too, very easy to reset rather than waste too much time trying to fix an annoying config issue.

I did the monthly image backup of my laptop yesterday. Thing is, I can’t really think of a scenario where I’d have to use it.

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The last device I reset was my Nexus 5x phone, because it became so slow -15 seconds to open the camera app and 5 seconds between pressing the button and it talking a picture.

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