How do you know when you should restore your phone?

[RavenSword]

So, I kind of have this thing with smart phones. My last iPhone I probably factory restored about a dozen or so times because I kept thinking there was performance issues with it. And mainly I was paranoid about performance effecting viruses.

I know it's paranoia mostly, but I really don't want to pastry doing at with my nexus 4 because its such a pain redoes loading everything all e time.

How do you know when a factory restore is probaly needed or would help? I have trouble discerning between what's just usual hitches and bugs over what's a actual issue that needs to have the phone to be wiped to be fixed

 

[Paul627g]

I rarely do a full factory reset. Usually going thru and clearing data/cache on apps that start showing signs of lag will clear things up.

If your rooted and have a custom recovery installed you can wipe cache/dalvik cache which always perks a device right up. I believe on some stock recoveries you have the option of wiping cache which can help some too.

Bottom line, factory reset is always a last resort IMO.

 

[RavenSword]

I rarely do a full factory reset. Usually going thru and clearing data/cache on apps that start showing signs of lag will clear things up.

If your rooted and have a custom recovery installed you can wipe cache/dalvik cache which always perks a device right up. I believe on some stock recoveries you have the option of wiping cache which can help some too.

Bottom line, factory reset is always a last resort IMO.

How do you tell which apps are worth clearing data/cache? Does clearing the data on a app mean I need to reinstall it to get it to work?

 

[donm527#IM]

when you experience an issue, and all else fails, and you are one moment from just throwing the phone against the wall... thats when you probably want to restore. true story.

personally with new computers or phones... i give myself a month to play with it carefree, try settings that i may forget where i did it, install stuff, uninstall stuff and then if i think i mucked it up enough that it's not right, i restore it. i restored my nexus a couple of times the first month getting use to jelly bean after years of ios and havent done it since...

i find when i get a glitch... i try to stop the app, clear cache, close all apps running and reboot and see if that helps. if not then i uninstall and reinstall and try. i check the google play reviews for the app to see if there are known glitches. if its with the phone in general and not a specific app, i will try to remember if i installed anything around that time and uninstall and test...

i had this one issue where while on vacation i will use my map to find a spot then bring up my navigation and it will not find a gps signal... i had to turn off and turn on my gps to get it to magically work and find a gps sig at that point and i can use the navigation. but i tried rebooting and stuff and got so pissed thinking the gps may be failing that i was one step from wanting to throw my phone against a wall cause i am on vacation and in a unfamiliar area....

then i decide to uninstall the last apps i installed around when the gps last worked... sounds like no relation... a battery saver type app and yahoo weather and something else... rebooted... havent had a gps signal issue since!

takes time but youll get the feel of android and figure out the little quirks and know what to do or when you feel you have to restore... or not. good luck.

 

[mamutarka]

How do you tell which apps are worth clearing data/cache? Does clearing the data on a app mean I need to reinstall it to get it to work?

apps that have big amount of cache when you go to app info. chrome, 9Gag, those are examples..just go through apps and see which ones have a lot of MB in cache

 

[RavenSword]

Would a app having a big cache effect the general performance of the phone or just the performance of said app?

Because I noticed my chrome app had like almost 300mb of cache.