How to wipe your phone or tablet before you sell it

How to wipe your phone or tablet before you sell it

Here is how to wipe your personal data from a mobile device the right way before trading up to a new model.

Lexy Savvides/CNET

Trading in or selling your old mobile device? Wipe it the right way to reduce the risk of personal data falling into the wrong hands.

Remember that no method apart from physically destroying the device and its storage is 100 percent foolproof -- data may still be recoverable with the right tools.

These tips are for the three main mobile operating systems, but if you have an older phone or an alternate OS, check the manual for full details on how to wipe your device.

Before you start:

• Back up all your data, including contacts
• Remember to remove the SIM card and any external storage such as a microSD card
• Log out of services like email and social media, then clear the data from these apps if you can
• Perform a separate encrypt and wipe of data on the microSD card as well if you don't plan to use the card in a new device
• Keep the serial number of the phone or tablet on file for your records.

Android

Lexy Savvides/CNET

The simplest way to wipe your Android device is to perform a factory reset. However, this often only clears data at the application level, and other information such as SMS and chat messages can be restored with some standard data recovery tools.

Instead, CNET's Dan Graziano has a full rundown on how to effectively wipe data on your Android phone or tablet which begins with encrypting your device first through the Settings menu.

You won't need any special tools, just a bit more patience than simply pressing the restore option within the settings.

Once the wipe is complete, remember to also revoke access to the phone from services such as Facebook and Google. To remove devices from your Google account, head tosecurity.google.com/settings/security/activity, click on the model you have wiped, and press Remove next to the Account Access option.

iOS

Lexy Savvides/CNET

Apple devices that support iOS 5 or later include hardware encryption when you set a passcode. If you perform a wipe using the method below, the encryption key is also overwritten which makes it very difficult for anyone who wants to recover the data.

Step one: Before starting the reset process, make sure to turn off all services, starting with Find My iPhone. Do this by heading to Settings > iCloud > Find My iPhone. Enter your Apple ID password when prompted.

Step two: Sign out of iCloud completely. Head to Settings > iCloud and find Sign Out at the bottom of the page. For iOS 7 devices, choose Delete Account.

If you delete all your data manually without signing out of iCloud, it will also delete the content from iCloud as well -- which is something you definitely don't want.

Step three: Turn off and sign out of other services including iMessage and Apple ID.

For iMessage, go to Settings > Messages > toggle the iMessage option. For your Apple ID, go to Settings > iTunes & App Store > tap your Apple ID email address and then Sign Out.

For added peace of mind you may also want to sign out individually of any other linked services and apps, such as Facebook or Twitter.

Step four: Start the wipe process. Go to Settings > General > Reset > Erase All Content and Settings. Confirm the selection.

Step five: If you have registered your device with Apple by its serial number, remove it from your support profile by logging in with your Apple ID at supportprofile.apple.com

Windows Phone

Josh Miller/CNET

At the time of writing, Windows Phone only offers encryption for business customers. The easiest option to wipe a Windows Phone 8 device is to perform a factory reset and then load dummy data to overwrite traces of the original data.

Step one: Open up Settings from the main apps list. Find About and then tap Reset Your Phone.

Step two: Confirm the action and then wait for the phone to wipe.

Step three: Connect the phone to a PC and open My Computer. If you are connecting via Mac, download the Windows Phone app. Find the phone, which should show up as a removable device, and open it.

Step four: Load dummy data onto the phone by dragging and dropping from another folder. Don't use your personal photos or documents here, instead try with files that contain no identifiable metadata that could be traced back to you, such as video or music files. Try and fill the phone with as much dummy data as possible.

Step five: Reset the phone again using the same method in step one. Repeat the dummy data load a few more times to ensure all your original data is overwritten.

Step six: Perform a final reset.

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How to add more camera modes on Galaxy S5 and Note 4

How to add more camera modes on Galaxy S5 and Note 4

Learn how to get more camera modes on your device for free by following these easy steps.

Nicole Cozma/CNET

Whether you enjoy taking photos all year long, or you're getting ready to take a bunch at festive seasonal gatherings, both the Galaxy Note 4 and Galaxy S5 are excellent options with their 16-megapixel cameras. As a bonus, these devices offer camera modes to get just the right shot.

Camera modes -- such as Animated photo, Sports or Panorama -- offer more control over the performance of your device's ability to take photos. While some camera modes come installed by default, Samsung offers extras through the Galaxy Apps store. Here's how to add more of them to your Note 4 or S5:

The Mode button is on the right.Nicole Cozma/CNET

Step 1: Open the Camera app and tap on the Mode button.

Camera modes on the Galaxy S5.Nicole Cozma/CNET

Step 2: Scroll through the list until you reach the end, where you will find a tile named Download. Tap this and you'll enter the Galaxy Apps store.

Camera modes available for download.Nicole Cozma/CNET

Step 3: You'll be presented with a list of available camera modes. These are all offered by Samsung and can be downloaded for free by tapping on each one and pressing "Install."

Now you can help your camera take the best shot for the current conditions, whether it's a beautiful landscape (Panorama and Surround shot modes) or a delicious spread on the table (Food mode).

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Windows 10 takes a second swing at the future of Microsoft's OS

Windows 10 takes a second swing at the future of Microsoft's OS

Windows 10 is everything Windows 8 should have been. Now, it's still early: the technical preview is just a week old, and barely scratches the surface of what Microsoft has promised is coming down the pipe. It's also buggy, and definitely shouldn't be installed on your primary PC.

But this fledgling operating system is at once panacea and prescience, a remedy for Windows 8's identity-crisis that also rethinks and reworks the overly-bold approach to Microsoft's dream of unifying the desktop and mobile experience.

The revamped, customizable Start menu.Screenshot by Nate Ralph/CNET

Boot up a PC running the Windows 10 Technical Preview, and you'll be dropped off at the oh so familiar desktop. A taskbar with familiar looking icons sits on the bottom, and the recycle bin sits in the upper left corner. A build number sitting on the right side of your desktop is the only indication that this isn't Windows 8 all over again.

And then you press the Start button, and are greeted by the return of the Start menu. It's a proper Start menu too, with your apps all stacked in that endless column of nested folders we've all been scrolling since Windows 95. And sitting alongside that column are Windows 8's lovely Live Tiles, with news-bites and social updates spinning ad infinitum.

Windows 8 was a bold reimagining of the operating system, but the Start screen has proven contentious. The colorful Live Tiles offer useful notifications and information, but they were designed with touchscreen devices in mind: much of the work we do in Windows involves a keyboard, a mouse, and large displays chock full of windows and apps. Windows 8's Modern apps demand a full screen's attention, oblivious of our need to multitask. And many app developers have stuck to apps that rip us back to the desktop, creating a confusing experience for folks who want to make the most of Windows.

The Windows 10 Start Menu sidesteps those problems entirely, giving us the best of both worlds.

Old is new again

Virtual desktops keep work and play separate.Screenshot by Nate Ralph/CNET

With Windows 10, the familiar and the new are mashed together in a form that's only a little different, but suddenly more useful than ever before. The new Start menu behaves much like older versions of Windows, with frequently used apps and any folders you've pinned lined up in a neat little column. To the right of that column are the Live Tiles, which function much like they do in Windows 8 in a fraction of the space. You pin apps as new tiles on a whim, and also resize and rearrange tiles to your liking. You can also resize the entire start menu, making it tall and narrow, or short and wide. And if you'd rather not deal with the Live Tiles at all, just right click them and remove them.

Press those Live Tile shortcuts, and the Modern apps introduced in Windows 8 open as classic windowed apps. This is a welcome change, allowing us to sample the new aesthetic Microsoft is pushing for the next generation of Windows without sacrificing our entire display. You can now drag these Modern apps around, snap them to half of your display, or minimize and maximize them at will.

Windows 10 lets you work smarter, too. Click the Task view button, and you'll get a quick glimpse of all of your open apps and windows. A black box running along the bottom of the display prompts to create a virtual desktop: that's a sort of private island that keeps everything you open there as an independent workspace. You can, for example, create one desktop for all of the applications you use for work, another to browse gaming forums or sites like Reddit, and yet another for games, or whatever you want.

The virtual desktop feature alone tempts me to install the preview on my primary machine. Of course we've had virtual desktops on Linux and Mac machines for years (and on Windows, from third-party apps), but it's nice to see Microsoft catching up here.

Modern apps no longer take up the whole screen.Screenshot by Nate Ralph/CNET

In Windows 10, You can press Ctrl + Windows key to jump between your desktops, triggering a slick little sliding animation that was added in the latest build of the Technical Preview. You can also right click an app when you're in task view and select a specific desktop to move it to.

It's not completely there yet, however. I'd really like to be able to drag and drop open apps to different desktops instead of right click all of the time. And being able to rearrange the virtual desktops I've created would be a huge boost to my productivity.

A step forward

But Windows 10's real game-changing potential is still purely theoretical: this'll be one operating system to rule them all, serving up a device-specific interface that'll scale from desktops down to smartphones, and everywhere in between, with universal apps that will run everywhere too. Microsoft has also offered a look at new trackpad gestures that are slated to make their way into the Technical Preview.

Some of these gestures will likely be familiar to folks who've used the trackpad on a Macbook: swipe down with three fingers for example, and you'll minimize all of the open windows on your desktop. Swipe up with three fingers to reopen them. You'll also be able to jump between open applications by swiping three fingers to the left or right, if you'd rather not use the Alt + Tab shortcuts, or are on a device without a keyboard.

These features haven't yet made their way to the technical preview, but you'll eventually be able to pop a 2-in-1 convertible device like the Surface Pro 3 onto its keyboard base, and watch the full-screen Start screen melt away, offering instead the new Start menu and the familiar desktop.

That could be a cure for the confusing mess that is the current Windows 8 PC ecosystem, chock full oflaptops that bend over backward or split from keyboards, or simply graft touchscreens onto familiar designs. We should finally see an end to the jarring, generally unsatisfying experience that urges us to dance between the desktop and that weird, full-screen purgatory where Modern apps live.

And if you want to flirt with the Windows 8 experience you can do that too: just right click the taskbar and choose the option that disables or enables the Start menu. If Windows 8 had shipped with that option to begin with, we would probably have avoided this issue entirely.

Future-proofing

Windows 10 isn't going to fix everything, but a seemingly simple tweak to one of Windows 8's most divisive elements has made a world of difference to the OS. And that's crucial to Windows' future, as Microsoft is still looking at the big picture: PCs are old news.

Desktops and laptops still handle most of our work and play, but tablets and smartphones have long since stolen the limelight: future operating systems will need to work to bridge that gap. We've seen steps in this direction from Apple, with OS X Yosemite's ability to hand off files and things like emails and calls from your phone or tablet. And some Android apps are making their way to Google's Chrome OS, and interesting sign of where Google might be headed.

Microsoft's vision of tomorrow's ideal operating system is grander still. The goal is to offer a unified experience across devices of all shapes and sizes, and one that will morph to make sense: icons to tap and home screens when you're on a phone or tablet, but windowed apps and nested folders when you're armed with a keyboard and mouse.

Windows 8 dreamed of dragging us into that future, but we kicked and screamed at the inefficiency of its one-size-fits-all approach. With Windows 10, Microsoft seems to be getting it right.

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Best GoPro accessories

Best GoPro accessories

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  Mounts, cases and more

  There's a good reason why GoPro's tagline is "the world's most versatile camera."

  With their super-compact design and point-and-shoot operation, it's a device that anyone can set up and use. And with its waterproof housing, you can use it in the snow or rain, in or out of the water, or really anywhere you want to go.

  But to get the most from a GoPro -- or any action cam for that matter -- you need to go beyond the adhesive helmet mount that came with the camera.

  What follows are accessories to help you do just that. And this list isn't just for GoPro users.

  Though many of these use the pronged mount used on GoPro's housings, the first product on the list shows you how to get around that. Also, the accessories here that don't use GoPro's mount use a standard 1/4-20 tripod mount.

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