Future Technology
Do not wipe your old phone until you have moved these twelve things
Key takeaways
- Move your two factor authenticator seeds before wiping, because this is the most common way people lock themselves out of everything
- Sign out of your account before the factory reset so activation lock actually releases
- Check the trade in quote against the private sale price, because the gap is often 40 percent or more
Every September a large number of people wipe a handset with their two factor seeds still sitting on it, then spend the next fortnight recovering email, banking and work logins one support ticket at a time. The phone is replaceable. The authenticator app on it usually is not.
With a new iPhone line arriving this evening and the foldable pricing story reshaping the whole ladder, a lot of handsets are about to get reset in a hurry. Run this phone trade in checklist first.
The twelve steps, in order
- 1. Take a full local backup before touching anything else. Cloud backups are convenient and incomplete.
- 2. Verify the backup actually restores. Do not trust the progress bar; open the restored data and check it.
- 3. Move your two factor authenticator seeds to the new device or export them. Do this before step 11, not after.
- 4. Sign out of your Apple or Google account so activation lock releases. A locked handset is worth nothing at trade in.
- 5. Transfer the eSIM through the carrier flow rather than assuming it follows the backup.
- 6. Export your message history, especially anything in an app that does not sync by default.
- 7. Deauthorise paired devices. Watches, earbuds and car head units all hold a pairing record.
- 8. Remove payment cards from the wallet.
- 9. Check for saved Wi-Fi passwords you have stored nowhere else, including guest networks and workplaces.
- 10. Note down any app that uses device based licensing, such as a password manager with a device limit.
- 11. Factory reset, then confirm on screen that it completed rather than assuming it did.
- 12. Photograph the serial number and the physical condition before you post it.
Two things worth spending money on
Hardware security keys make step 3 much less fragile. If your accounts support a FIDO certified key such as the YubiKey 5 NFC, your recovery path stops depending on a single phone continuing to exist. An external SSD makes step 1 fast enough that you will actually do it rather than skipping to the cloud and hoping.
The same logic applies to any device you are retiring, which is why the Windows 11 upgrade checklist for an old PC opens with the same two steps.
Check the quote before you accept it
Trade in programmes price convenience. The gap between a carrier or manufacturer quote and a private sale is routinely 40 percent or more on a recent flagship in good condition. If you are already weighing what a foldable costs you against a slab, that gap is worth ten minutes of checking.
The step people skip is number two. A backup you have not tested is a guess, and upgrade day is a bad time to find out.
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