How to Factory Reset Your Galaxy S5 and Restore factory default settings | Andrea de Michaelis – Creating my own reality, one thought at a time

If your phone gets slow or doesn’t work as it usually does, it may help to restore the factory default settings. All settings and configurations you’ve made on your phone are deleted.

To do a Factory Data Reset
Press the settings icon.
Press Backup and reset.
Press Factory data reset.

Restore factory default settings
Press Reset device.
Press Erase everything.

It will say all your personal information, pictures, files and applications will be erased, but don’t freak. It restores it also. Wait a moment while the factory default settings are restored. Follow the instructions on the display to set up your phone and prepare it for use.

After it resets, it will take a few moments, then the Setup Wizard will come on. I chose everything to backup to Cloud. Even though I said delete messages and photos, it began restoring them. A few apps that I’d unchecked to NOT install, it restored them.

After rebooting my former phone, a HTC One V, I had to re-sync all my accounts, but it did it automatically with the Galaxy S5. I made sure to have my passwords in front of me to sign back in.

You will be asked to sign in to your email and Google account. Gmail is set up later, so I entered my AOL email info here. Keep checking your phone to follow the prompts to continue to process. After you’ve signed in to email and Google and Picasa, it will take up to 30 minutes to download and restore all your apps and sync your accounts.

It will take 10-30 minutes to restore all your apps so don’t be impatient, it will all come back.

To check the progress, you can go to the Play Store and click on those three horizontal lines at the upper left of screen, then choose My Apps & Games. Scroll down to your app and you’ll see the downloads in progress. Search for any you don’t see and it likely will say the download is pending.

To get the icons back on your home screen, go to Apps and scroll to the last page, that’s where they will be. If any are missing, they may be still pending download. Press the icon and holding it down, slide it to the far left to move it to your home screen. Keep going back to Apps after you do each one, to do the next.