Originally Posted by
treetopsranch You haven't received too many responses to your question because hardly anyone encrypts their phones. They may set a password or pin or finger swipe to unlock the phone.
I thought I read somewhere that nowadays phones are encrypted by default, just not in the way we use to do it. Once you set the PIN or password, it more or less activates the encryption. I'd have to try finding the article again, but it was something to the effect of file level encryption. In either case, my V20 doesn't even have the option to encrypt the phone, only the SD card, and looking into that missing option is what lead me to find out about the change.
To address the OP's questions, you'll be fine. Once you enter your password, pin, or whatever to unlock the phone, you'll never notice the encryption is there. Performance isn't hurt, and files will transfer smoothly. If you tether to a computer with the screen off/locked, it won't be able to see your files until you unlock the phone again.
It will take a few more seconds to boot up the phone, but that is negligible. If your phone has the option to be encrypted, then you should be given the option to decrypt it. At least my last phone did that after I encrypted it.
Just a bit of a side note: The recommended way to prepare a phone to trade in, sell, etc. is to first log out of all accounts, including Google. Then encrypt it if you have that option. Then factory reset. The reset doesn't remove the encryption per se. What it does is throw away the encryption key and writes over data as it resets the OS to stock. That way if any residual data remains on the device (entirely possible), it is still encrypted but not recoverable. Even if you could access it, your password wouldn't work on it because the key is also tied to other things that would've been changed as part of the reset as well.