Posted: 10/20/2012 7:48:14 AM EDT
| Accidentally selected my phone to search google play store as default, I need to deselect this for another search. How do I unfuck myself? |
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When you say "selected to search google play by default", what do you mean? What are you doing to bring up this search? Is it in a widget on the home screen, is it when you tap the search button, or what?
ETA: ALso, what specific phone/tablet do you have? Is this a default google app that you're using, or is it some wack shit that your manfacturer/carrier has installed? |
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Home screen -> menu -> settings -> "Storage" -> Factory Data Reset. That removes all _your_ information, but I dunno if it's a full factory reset. You might have to boot into recovery to do that.
To allow recovery booting Home -> menu -> settings -> power -> ensure "Fast boot" is unchecked. Turn off your phone. Hold down volume up, the home button, and power. Continue holding them until your phone boots into something you've never seen before. This'll be the recovery screen. You can navigate its menus with the volume buttons (up down) and the power button (select). There should be an option in there somewhere to do a full factory data reset. PLEASE NOTE: if you do perform a factory data reset, you'll have to re-do all your settings and reinstall all your apps and such. |
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Quoted:
If I do that, wouldn't I be better off rooting the phone(I have no idea what I am doing there either) at that point? Rooting your phone or installing custom software/firmware will involve doing one or more data resets, but doing the data reset will just require you to "start over" like it's a new phone: entering your google credentials and reinstalling your apps and such. I'm a moron (and unlucky, because I keep buying phones with shitty manufacturer and carrier support), so the couple of times I've rooted my android phones it's been a big pain in the ass. The results can be pretty amazing, though: rooting the phone and installing a ROM that allowed overclocking really extended the useful life of my Samsung Moment, and I much preferred the simple stripped UI when I installed BAMF on my Thunderbolt. I imagine that the Galaxy S3 (as a bad-ass flagship phone) probably has a huge base of support among modders and users, so unlocking the bootloader and flashing custom stuff should be comparatively easy. XDA Developers is a hotbed of helpful and knowledgeable developrers and users, there should be lots of FAQs and such on how to unlock, root, and install custom software on your phone if you want to go that route. But the factory reset shouldn't cost you more than maybe a half hour reconfiguring your phone, and runs a negligible risk of bricking your phone, so I'd try that first and see if that solves your problem, then you can think about whether you want to root it in isolation from this wack search problem. |