In the course of business a couple of weeks ago, a client asked about his phone. He wondered if it could have become infected somehow, as it was frequently restarting on its own. He had called his carrier who said, oh, there's something wrong so let's reset your phone. What??!! I imagine the screech of a record needle being pulled right there, for those of you who even know what that sounds like, I suppose. I digress. Reset the phone, that's what they told him, and being the unsuspecting person that he was he did it. Reset the whole thing. The whole thing. All of it.
If you are in full realization of what that he did, you understand my disbelief, my appalled, dismayed, utter disbelief. Someone on the other end of the phone halfway across the world that doesn't have to deal with the aftermath of this recommended reset, says, "Press Settings, Backup and Reset, Factory Data Reset. That should solve your problem." Of course, that same rep forgot to add, "Oh, by the way, the phone will disconnect and you'll never be able to track me down."
No, really, it's not QUITE that bad, but come on, everything on the phone is gone. Everything was gone. All of it. Nothing left. And how happy do you think this innocent customer was when the phone rebooted and he realized this? Suffice it to say he would have dearly loved to chat in person with the rep. Fast forward a few days to when I see him, he's telling me this story and as I start to see where it's going I can't help but groan. I am getting that sinking feeling like it's my data that's gone, like I feel when anyone loses data. Data hoarder that I am, I hate to see it happen. I know a few more of you, so I'm not alone in sharing this agony. This utter, useless, agony.
Why useless? Because as I start to ask questions about why he called them in the first place, I found out about the shut downs and restarts and the sudden way it had become flaky and realized the problem wasn't the system. The problem was the most recently installed app!! The rep didn't bother to ask about apps and the caller didn't think it could be the problem. And now the phone was back to square one.
I recently intentionally reset a rooted device, and even using a full app/data backup for the restore I had issues. Apps that thought they had Google's permission to use Google services could no longer connect, couldn't sync, were no longer useful. The device had been properly set up in the first place and it had worked before the reset, but not any longer. I finally narrowed down that it couldn't reconnect to the account that had been being used but could connect to others. Soooo, it's a permission issue somewhere along the line. Had to find Google's Revocation page and revoke all that access and force my apps to request new permission to connect.
Luckily this client's reset wasn't quite as hairy as all that, but it's always a possibility. Keep in mind that non-Google apps using Google services to sync, transfer and otherwise keep us up to speed can balk at a reconnect. Google's end still identifies the device's info and finds no reason to reissue the connection token leaving the apps stuck in limbo. This might help : Google's Revocation Page.
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