How to erase a Honeycomb tablet (photos)

Learn how to erase an Android 3.0 Honeycomb tablet step-by-step.

Donald Bell

July 7, 2011 2:54 p.m. PT

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Honeycomb home screen

In this How To, we're going to show you the process for erasing and restoring an Android Honeycomb tablet. It's something you should probably do if you're returning a tablet back to a store, selling it, or gifting it to someone else.

Step 1: Make sure you've backed up anything important. Connect it to your computer over USB and drag over any photos or videos you may have taken, as well as any notes or documents you want to hang on to. If you're not around a computer, e-mail it to yourself.

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Memory card

Step 2: Remove any memory cards you may have inserted. If these cards are yours and you're not passing them along to the next owner, this is a good reminder to get them out of the tablet.

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Honeycomb home screen setings

Step 3: We want to locate the Factory Data Reset option. So far, Android 3.0 is fairly consistent about where you'll find this. On Android 1.0 or 2.0 devices you'll have to do some hunting within the settings menu.

For Honeycomb, open the pane in the bottom right corner and expand to see all settings. Or, you can open your apps from the top right corner, and tap Settings from the All Apps tab.

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Honeycomb settings

Once in Settings, you'll find the reset option under the Privacy tab.

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Honeycomb erase

Select the Factory Data Reset option and confirm that you want to erase all of the data on the device and restore the tablet to factory settings.

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Honeycomb confirm

One last confirmation, just for good measure.

Once the tablet reboots, you should see the same setup screen that appeared when you first took the tablet from the box. Leave it blank, shut it down, and pack it up. Your job is done.