How to Encrypt Your Android Phone and its pros and cons

Android includes a system encryption feature that encrypts all data – including application data, downloaded files, and everything else – on your phone or tablet. You’ll have to enter your PIN or password each time you turn on your phone.

Why Would You Want to Encrypt Your Phone?

Encryption stores your phone’s data in an unreadable, seemingly scrambled form. When you power on your phone, you’ll have to enter the encryption PIN or password, which is the same as your phone’s lock-screen PIN or password. Your phone uses your PIN or password to decrypt your data, making it understandable. If someone doesn’t know the encryption PIN or password, they can’t access your data.

Encryption Warnings

Before you enable encryption, be aware that there are some drawbacks:

• Slower Performance: Encryption always adds some overhead, so your device will be a bit slower. The actual speed decrease depends on your phone’s hardware.
• Encryption is One-Way Only: After encrypting your device’s storage, you can only disable encryption by resetting your phone to its factory default settings. This will also erase all the data stored on your phone, so you’ll have to set it up from scratch.

Not everyone should enable encryption, as it will do more harm than good for many people. If you still want to enable encryption, read on.

How to Enable Encryption on Android

Encryption may take an hour or even longer, depending on how much data you have on your device. Plug in your phone and ensure you have enough time before continuing. If you have to interrupt the encryption process, you’ll lose some (or all!) of the data on your phone.

Before you continue, ensure you have a lock screen PIN or password set up. Android won’t allow you to encrypt your device until you create a PIN or password. To set one up if you haven’t already done so, open your device’s Settings screen, tap Security, tap Screen Lock, tap PIN or Password, and set up a new PIN or password.

You can now encrypt your Android phone’s storage. Open its Settings screen, tap Security, and tap Encrypt phone (or Encrypt tablet) under Encryption.

  

Read the warning information and tap the Encrypt phone button to continue. You’ll see a message telling you to plug in your phone if it’s not plugged in yet.

You’ll have to provide the lock-screen PIN or password to continue with the encryption process. Agree to the warning and then leave your phone alone for a while – it may take an hour or more. Don’t interrupt the phone while it’s encrypting its storage.

You’ll see a progress indicator appear. After it’s done, your device’s storage will be encrypted. You’ll have to enter the PIN or password each time you boot your phone or its storage will be unreadable, so don’t forget the password! If you do, you can only remove the encryption by performing a factory reset.

If you used a PIN instead of a password, you’ll get a password prompt anyway. Just enter the PIN number using the numeric keyboard.