To be Hard reset or not to be?

[AJ98]

No you don't, you reset the phone, that's all. If you were to reset to factory state, then you'd end up going back to WP8 as it was released in 2012 and you'd have to do all the updates all over again. Factory reset isn't something that's supported (it can be done, but not officially unless your carrier does it or you take the shady XDA type paths).

Resetting the phone after a big update can be helpful since, as others pointed out, you clear out all the garbage that WP8 and/or the update process might have collected. Your ROM will be updated to a WP8.1 image, so that's where the device will be restored from: a clean 8.1 install. Considering 8.1 will have pretty good restore options for all your start screen and such, it would seem like a good idea to update and then do a hard reset. I'd wait a couple days for good measure though, it's a new update and nobody knows how long the phone will take to sync all your settings and home screen to the cloud - most likely a few minutes, but better safe waiting 1/2 days than sorry, right? I plan to do this specifically to sort out all my Xbox music problems: since we're changing from the Music/Videos hub where I STILL cannot sync my playlists from Windows 8.1's Xbox Music app, I'm hoping after the update this will work, but I've tried so many times under WP8 that god knows how "dirty" those files are... I'd rather do a reset and have everything cleanly installed, then add all my music all over again. Fingers crossed I'll finally get my playlists on my phone without a) having to manually enter them on the phone or b) paying for an xbox music subscription!

i didnt know if you reset your phone, you will have to install all updates again. ireset my windows phone 8 after a small update and nothing happened. still in updated version