How to Reset Your G1 and Start From Scratch

By Rob Jackson on October 25, 2008
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It came time to part with my review unit of the G1 (Thanks T-Mobile!) and send the phone back to its rightful owner. But what about all the personal info on the phone? The apps, texts, e-mails, AIMs and all that jazz? A quick search of AndroidForums.com turned up an easy way of restoring your G1 to factory settings:

if you power off your phone and hold the home (shaped like a house) and the end (red hangup button) for about 20 seconds you get a triangle with an exclamation point and a picture of the G1.

Now all you have to do is pop open that pretty QWERTY keyboard and there are several keyboard shortcuts you can use to accomplish what you want to do:

Home+Back reboot system now - (Soft Reboot)

Alt+L - Toggle log text display - (Toggles between the exclamation and menu options)

Alt+S - apply sdcard:update.zip - (Not brave enough yet)

Alt+W - Wipe data/factory reset - (What I chose, had to re-register, out of the box settings)

I used the last option (Alt + W) and restored my borrowed G1 to factory settings. I’m sure the soft reboot could be helpful too, should you run into problems a troubled application may have caused. We didn’t try the other 2 options so use at your own risk.

By the way, I couldn’t live without a G1 so I made the leap and purcahsed a G1 with a T-Mobile service plan. I’m still a loyal Verizon customer and will simply have to keep both plans… but I NEEDED the G1. So basically, you can expect the application reviews and insight you’ve gotten at phandroid.com to cotinue since we’ve got our very own device now!

[Via Android Forums]


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6 Responses »

  1. Or, just go to Settings > SD card & phone storage > Factory data reset

    Bonus points for Anderoid having made this so easy that a blog post on the topic is just plain silly. ;)

    -danny

  2. There is a option in the settings that will allow to do a full factory reset without all that hassle. Simply go to
    Go to SD card\Phone Storage and at the bottom of that you should see Factory Reset.

  3. Will Factory Reset erase the information off of the SIM card?
    Here is the situation:
    Initial setup of G1 used my.name@gmail.com
    Want to change that so it uses an address from my Google Apps address, for example: http://www.google.com/a/Scott.com and the Bryan@Scott.com account).

    Any information or ideas? TIA

    - Scott

  4. i did that and know the fone wont turn on. can some one help?

  5. Bryan, I did today what you are wanting to do and it went fine. Sym card wasn’t touched and I’m doing the same thing you want to do with my google apps address.

  6. I actually had the phone freeze up on me so the only option for me was to turn the phone off and reset it the way shown. So the “settings” option may not always be useful.

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