I'm trying to figure out a strange issue I had with my phone. A couple of days ago, I woke up to find my phone off, and when I powered it back on, it took me straight to the initial setup like it had been factory reset. At first, I thought it might be a system update, but once I got past the setup, everything was gone—my emails, photos, apps, all wiped out. I checked my banking apps, and luckily everything was okay, but I panicked. I live in an area where IMEIs get messed with a lot, so that was on my mind too. The weirdest part is that my phone's storage still shows as completely full, but I can't find any files or data taking up that space. It's almost like my old data is still there but not visible. I'm using a cheaper Android model that hasn't received security updates in a while, and I'm wondering if this might be a malware issue or if the storage being too full caused the system to crash and wipe itself. Has anyone experienced a similar situation?
4 Answers
I had a similar issue with my Huawei Y9 Prime from 2019. It was an older device, and a weak battery caused random restarts. One time, it reset itself, but some of my pictures were still in the gallery. So, it’s possible that not everything got wiped.
If you still can't find anything, try plugging your phone into a computer. You might be able to access the filesystem and see if any files are still lurking there.
Sometimes, a significant update can make your phone startup look like it's being set up new. Are you sure everything is completely wiped when you check?
If your phone factory reset itself, you might want to try doing another factory reset just to see if that resolves the storage issue. It can't hurt to try at this point!
True, but it might be that the phone didn’t actually wipe everything since the storage is still full.