• [deleted]

Hello all,

I was thinking about resetting my phone but I was wondering if there were any actual differences between formatting it through the os settings or reflashing the OS entirely.

Thank you.

    [deleted] No, there is no difference. The only partition the user is allowed to write into is the /user partition. This gets wiped when you factory reset. The OS partitions are untouched.

    • de0u replied to this.

      Rizzler No, there is no difference.

      Given what @GrapheneOS wrote a month ago in the thread referenced above, "there is no difference" seems like it might be a bit of an overstatement. I would say there is no difference unless something difficult to exploit has been exploited.

        de0u You're right, thanks for the correction.

        The only reason flashing is slightly more secure than simply doing a factory reset is that there's some extra verified boot attack surface for verifying the OS rather than only the early firmware. This shouldn't matter to most people. Only a very sophisticated attacker is going to even make a serious attempt to exploit the verified boot process on Pixels where it's very well implemented overall

        • [deleted]

        Thank you all.
        How do I change this to resolved?