Howto: (Android) T-Mobile G1 hard reset

My (beloved) Android based G1 from T-Mobile “died” last night, at least temporarily.

I was browsing, doing research on Bike seats in a local store, and it suddenly just became unresponsive. Then I had to keep taking out the battery just to turn it off. It would boot, then freeze on the android boot screen, then go to a blank back lit screen. I was getting notices about low onboard space, and I think it was about the drive space being all used up. The regular rebooting, which I did via battery removal about 12 times, was not working.

Anyway, should you have the issue, do a hard factory reset: turn off the phone by removing and reinserting the battery, then reboot using ‘home’ and ‘end’ keys simultaneously pressed simultaneously, then on the keyboard do a alt-W. Had to reinstall a few things, but the phone is working as good as ever, which is to say pretty good.

After the hard factory reset, you will have to reinstall all applications you had before, re-enter passwords and establish your identity with services. It took me about 20 minutes to do this, but I was thrilled that I didn’t end up with a brick. Incidentally, it reset to the upgraded version of the Android OS, Donut, in this case.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Old Android devices may not support Android 2.0 (infoworld.com)
• Android 1.6 update now official for T-Mobile G1 and myTouch 3G (engadget.com)
• T-Mobile: Hey, We Sell Android Devices Too! (mashable.com)

If you enjoyed this, please share it!