How to restore factory settings on the Samsung Galaxy S II

If your Android phone freezes frequently, running slow and drains the battery very quickly, restoring to default factory settings might be useful. I had problems with my one year old Samsung Galaxy S2 which used to hand very frequently while using web browsers and after the Ice Cream Sandwich update, the battery used to drain completely in 2-3 hours. In this tutorial we will see how to restore factory setting on your Samsung Galaxy S2 phone. You can use it for other android phones as well.

Before proceeding, please backup your data on the phone.

Step 1:

Turn off your phone. In case it is hanged, remove the battery and thus turn it off.

Step 2:

Now, with the phone off, hold down the PowerVolume Up and Menu buttons simultaneously for approx. 10 seconds. Release the buttons when you see the android logo on the screen. This will bring us to the boot menu which in looks is similar to Linux boot menu.

Samsung Galaxy Hard Reset To Factory Settings

Step 3:

In the boot menu, use the volume button to navigate up and down between the options. Select option of Wipe Data/Factory Reset. When prompted, select ‘Yes – Delete All User Data‘. It will take couple of minutes.

Samsung Galaxy Hard Reset To Factory Settings

Step 4:

Once the reset process is done, you will be back on the boot menu. Now choose the Reboot System Now option. You have successfully restored your phone to factory settings. Now you will be asked to follow instructions as you were asked the first time you used your phone.

Samsung Galaxy Hard Reset To Factory Settings

Tip to save battery life:

If you were suffering from extremely fast battery drain, avoid installing all the apps back from your Google accounts. This is because most of the some incompatible app is responsible for the battery drain and you may never find out which one. So if you can, then avoid restoring your apps. This might be painful, but trust me, my phone battery now easily lasts 12-16 hours even if I use the data connection.

Image Courtesy: Vodafone

How To Take Screenshot in Galaxy S2 Android Ice Cream Sandwich

Android Logo Linux Windows 150So you have this awesome Android powered, iPhone killer, Samsung Galaxy S2 and you are looking for some easy ways to take screenshot of your phone screen. If you tried to look for some free app in Play Store, you must have been disappointed because it has some (cr)apps that are mostly paid and are not worth using at all. If you were an iPhone user, you must be missing the easy two button pressing screen capture method.

Now don’t miss iPhone for just that one feature because guess what you can do the same in your Samsung Galaxy S2 as well. Yes! There is this most easy way to take screenshot in your Galaxy S2 running on Ice Cream sandwich (other Android OS are also supported). Lets see how can you take the screenshot without any app in 1 second:

Press the volume down button and the power button at (almost) same time and hold them together for around 1-2 second.

Don’t forget to hold them for 1-2 second. You will see a capture sound and a message on screen that a screenshot has been captured.

Screenshot-Galaxy-S2-Samsung

You can find the captured screenshots in Gallery->Screenshots folder.

Samsung-Screenshot-Galaxy-s2-2

I hope you were able to easily take screenshot in Galaxy S2. Let me know if you face any problem. I will be only happy to help :)