How often do you reset your devices?

Last night, while I was managing my music collection, I looked at my iPhone 5 and decided to reset it. Yeah, just like that. I didn’t have any real reason to do it, either. The phone hadn’t been acting strangely. The keyboard hadn’t been lagging. And applications hadn’t been force closing for no reason, either. The phone’s display hadn’t even been on when I picked it up that first time, and decided to dig into the settings, and completely wipe my phone.

So I wiped it, and I started fresh.

I don’t know if I can necessarily blame it on my time with Android, back in the days when rooting my phone was something I used to love to do, but I think that may have something to do with it. With a few Android-powered devices back in the day, like Motorola’s original DROID, or HTC’s DROID Incredible, I loved rooting and adding new things to my phones. But, one of the things I also loved doing was resetting my phone. I loved to start fresh after a certain amount of time with a customized ROM, or even with the stock software running out of the box. Resetting the software gave me a new phone, in a way, especially when I could add new things I didn’t have before.

But with the iPhone 5, and even with more recent Android devices I’ve purchased, rooting or otherwise altering my phone isn’t high on my “to-do” list. So why did I reset the iPhone last night, without warning? Without having a reason, like things were breaking, why would I want to delete everything off my phone, and essentially start over?

I like starting over. I make sure that all my things are backed up, like photos and documents, and then I just go right ahead and reset the device. I’ve got all my apps on my computer, too, so I don’t even have to go back into the App Store and download them again. Just plug the phone into the computer (I know, I know, blasphemy!) and transfer what I need transferred.

No, I didn’t just copy everything I had over the first time. That wouldn’t make any sense. I left some apps off my phone entirely, and I added a few others I hadn’t had on there before the reset. At the same time, it gave me a blank slate, so to speak, to customize as much as I wanted. Now there aren’t any folders with apps in them. I can rearrange as I see fit, and a lot faster than I could have before, with a bunch of folders spread across my home screens.

And my phone isn’t the only thing I reset, either. Just last month I backed up my Windows 8 laptop and started over, for no reason whatsoever other than I wanted to. The last tablet I owned, I reset at least once in between the time I turned it on for the first time, and ultimately got rid of it. I reset devices frequently. That may have something to do with the fact that they make it easy to do so, too. Going into settings and finding a way to reset your phone or tablet is really easy, as it should be. After all, if your phone is having some serious issues, it should be easy to utilize one of the simplest fixes.

I’m not sure when the next time will be that I reset my phone, but I’m sure it will happen again, and probably soon. I don’t remember the last time I had to forcefully reset any of my devices, though, because of an issue with software. Maybe that’s because I reset my devices enough before any glitches start happening. I’m okay thinking that.

Do you reset your devices before there’s a reason to? Or, just to start fresh? Do you reset your devices a lot because of rooting your device, or changing certain features of it? Or are you like some people that I know, and you never, ever reset your device? Let me know!