How do you setup a Used Android phone?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I want to give my old phone to a relative.

It used to be simple. Factory Reset, Change the SIMM and the new person put in their SIMM and signed in

Now, I’ve been told a Factory reset requires logging back into the original Google Account?
It will brick the phone if unsuccessful.

Is that only if the SIMM and phone number is still the same?

Does changing the SIMM make a difference in this security check?

I remember they were concerned stolen phones were Factory reset and sold. There should be a way to give away or sell a phone that’s mine for reuse?

2

There is, but the new owner will need the previous owner’s cooperation, just as you’ve described.

3

You mean I have to factory reset, and sign in? That puts my account back on the phone?

I’m not comfortable having all my Apps and data on a phone someone else is using.

4

Generally you sign the device OUT of your old account first, then reset.

5

Ah, that makes sense.

I found this article from 2023. They don’t mention the security check after a reset.

I didn’t want to brick a good phone.

There is good information in this article.
Remove from find my device and unpair Bluetooth devices are steps I didn’t know about.

6

This is the advice I find on other sites. Removing your account disables Factory Reset Protection.

Though someone else claims that “Erase All Data (Factory Reset)” from the Settings also turns off FRP, because you’re already logged in. And that what turns on FRP is stuff like holding buttons down to try and boot into recovery mode and reset the phone.

7

I’ll Google and research how to remove my account from the phone.

It seems counterintuitive because a Android phone requires an account to Sign On.

How do I get back in to Factory reset? I guess Safe Mode is an option.

8

I found this article. Yet another Gotcha.

I’ll give it a try. If not successful, the phone goes into a drawer and I’ll tell my relative to buy a new one. The base models are under $150.

9

It’s not as bad as it was when I was doing phone tech-support for a living, but years ago, a metric ton of people never knew/wrote down their initial setup information. They’d never had an Apple or Google account before and had someone at the store (or a family member) set it up. So, for most of them, it was an ironclad bitch as anti-theft/security measures ratcheted up. And yeah, a lot of time they were having to do the account recovery (if they were LUCKY enough to have access to the account) and then wait before they could then complete everything and do the reset prior to trade-ins.

Not happy making for anyone, but, again, from experience, the sheer number of fraudulent phone sales (Craigslist was especially bad) or friend-of-friend deals was bad.

IMHO (very much so) the value of most older phones (unless it was a super-premium/rare model) is so low that other than some sort of super trade-in deal, that it’s almost never worth it with carriers - keep the phone as a spare or hand-me-down, because the problems with selling it online and the prices sold for are often just not worth the hassle.

10

It sounds like Google is trying hard to discourage selling or giving away a used phone.

I understand they really don’t have much value if the phone is more than two years old.

11

I think it’s more to make it harder to reset stolen devices in order to resell them. That it discourages selling or gifting old phones is a (not unwelcome for anyone selling new phones) side effect.

12

I recently did this on a newish Android phone running the most recent version of the operating system. I don’t remember the exact details, but pretty much anything that requires entering the owner’s Google password to perform the reset will leave the phone ready to accept a new owner. I believe this can be removing the Google account first, and then doing a factory reset, or entering the password during the reset.

It was not difficult.

I know this is about Android, but a similar caveat probably applies to an issue I discovered recently resetting an Apple device. If the iCloud account a device is bound to has been deleted, then the device can never be setup with a new owner. Additionally, once the device is reset, it can never be setup with the old owner, because that account no longer exists. Fortunately this was an old iPad of minimal value.

So, don’t delete the Android’s owner’s Google account until after the phone is removed from their account.

13

I recommend asking a kid for help.

~VOW