As it happens with all new phones overtime, you’ll fill your HTC One M9 with loads of apps and games, and then find out that it’s starting to hang a little. You’ll delete a few apps, but you won’t feel the performance punch your One M9 used to give when it was new. Well, there’s one quick fix — factory reset your phone.

Performing a factory reset erases everything on your phone and brings it back to its original state. However, if you’ve installed any OTA update on your One M9, it’ll survive the factory reset. So it isn’t exactly getting to the original state, but a factory reset wipes all of user content on the device like photos, videos, apps, documents, etc.

Factory resetting your phone is also useful when you’re selling away your phone.

You can factory reset your One M9 in two ways. First option is from phone’s Settings (soft reset), but if for some reason that doesn’t work, you can factory reset your One M9 from the Download mode (hard reset).

HOW TO FACTORY RESET HTC ONE M9

METHOD 1 → SOFT RESET FROM SETTINGS

  1. Open Settings page on your HTC One M9.
  2. Select “Backup & reset”, and then select “Reset phone” on the next page.
  3. (optional) Tick the “Erase all data” checkbox to also delete all your music, photos and other data on the phone. If you want to wipe the SD card also, tick the “Erase SD card” checkbox as well.
    └ Be very cautious while doing this and make sure you’ve taken backup of all your important stuff on the phone and SD card.
  4. Select “OK”, you’ll see a warning screen, tap “OK” again and your HTC One M9 will begin the factory reset process.

METHOD 2 → HARD RESET FROM DOWNLOAD MODE

UNLOCKED BOOTLOADER REQUIRED: You must have an unlocked bootloader on your HTC One M9 to be able to factory reset it from the Download Mode.

Read: How to Unlock HTC One M9 Bootloader

  1. Power off your device and wait for 5-10 seconds until the device is fully switched off.
  2. Press and hold Volume Down button, then press the Power button to switch on your phone and release it, but keep holding the Volume Down button. Your phone will boot into bootloader mode.
  3. You’ll see a screen with option to boot into Download mode among several other options. Here, press Volume down twice to navigate to “BOOT TO DOWNLOAD MODE”, then press Power button to select it and boot into Download mode.
    └ In Download mode, use Volume buttons to scroll Up and Down between options and use Power button to select an option.
  4. Scroll to “Factory Reset” option and press Power button to select it.
  5. Once factory reset finishes, select reboot.

Enjoy!