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 reset Unity to get rid of messed up compiz setting

I keep messing with compiz and in order to make Unity look better I often happen to make it worse. To get it back in its original setting, I use this command in terminal:

Unity --reset

It takes sometime (seems never ending to me) and a restart after that (I do not wait for it to show that the reset has been completed) takes Unity back in it’s default setting.

How to hack / reset Nokia Mobile Phone Code

Hack a Nokia Mobile PhoneThis trick works with most of the Nokia phones but exceptions may be there. It most likely won’t work for the newer phones like the Lumia 710 or the Windows phone. By this method you can get the master code of the Nokia phone. These master codes are unique for each phone and can be used in place for the security / phone code. This way if you have forgotten your Security code then you can reset it with this Master code. Following are the steps:

Supported Nokia Phones: 2100, 3110, 3210, 3310, 3315, 3330, 3350, 3390, 3410, 3610, 5110(i), 5130, 5190, 5210, 5510, 6080, 6110, 6130, 6138, 6150, 6190, 6210, 6250, 7110, 8210, 8250, 8290, 8850, 8855, 8890, 9110(i), 9210(i), 9290, 3100(b), 3108, 3120, 3200(b), 3220, 3230, 3300, 3360, 3510(i), 3530, 3590, 3595, 3600, 3650, 3660, 5100, 5140(i), 6020, 6021, 6100, 6101, 6108, 6200, 6220, 6230(i), 6260, 6310(i), 6500, 6510, 6590, 6600, 6610(i), 6620, 6650, 6800, 6810, 6820, 6822, 7200, 7210, 7250(i), 7260, 7270, 7280, 7600, 7610, 7650, 7700, 7710, 8310, 8390, 8800, 8910(i), 9300(i), 9500, N-Gage (QD).

P.S. It doesn’t unlock the PIN code.