Queries on Soft Reset

[technogeek019]

Despite owning a windows phone for 1 year I still don't really know what does a soft reset mean
My 620 is my first smartphone and I haven't really tried soft reseting it yet cause I don't know what does it actually do.
So as dumb as it may seem
What does a soft reset do?
Does it wipe my data, apps, messages, contacts, active logins and etc ?
Do I soft reset my phone when it is turned off or turned on?
What is it used for?

 

[Pete]

No, it won't wipe anything.

To give you an analogy, a soft reset is like shutting down and restarting your computer. When you reboot, everything is there as it was.It's used when the phone gets a big laggy or behaves in a slightly odd manner.
A hard (factory) reset is like wiping the hard disk and re-installing the operating system and all of your programs. It's used when a soft reset doesn't solve an issue or the phone becomes unresponsive altogether.

 

[Shubhendu Singh]

I think all my active logins were disabled after soft reset.
I unpinned my twitter/wpcentral/fb and disqus app before soft resetting and i had to log in in each of them after it.
Edit : also my Data Sense data was all empty. Stars from scratch.

 

[ronnyk]

I think all my active logins were disabled after soft reset.

I read on another thread that soft resetting clears app caches. I guess that explains why your login credentials were wiped.