Last year I made a post on making your newly rooted phone speedier. Well, I have just discovered an equally novel way of getting the best out of a new ROM, be it you are upgrading or installing the ROM for the first time.

Since this post will have lots of images, I will go straight to the crust. The whole idea behind this post is hinged on the fact that preserving data and system settings across ROMs makes the phone oftentimes perform less speedy than on the former ROM, even though you just did an upgrade. And that is what I discovered when I upgraded from CyanogenMod 6.0 to CyanogenMod 6.1, when I preserved the system settings the phone was annoyingly sluggish, but when I wiped the system settings (a factory reset) the phone was amazingly speedy. In (near) fact, the homescreen scrolls before I actually swipe! But in this post I will teach you how to factory reset your phone to get the best out of the new ROM and yet not lose a single system/user data, not even a last call record!

As is my usual (self-inconvenienting) habit, I will start from the basics.