@OldCowboy,

This is a relatively common step for many smart home devices. To change the wireless network, without having to reset the device, your device needs to have an extra piece of hardware to connect with your phone, such as Bluetooth.

To change the network, you actually do not need to perform a factory reset, as a soft reset will keep the device name and settings, but will reset the network settings.

The reason that there must be some sort of reset is that the SSID for your phone to connect to and communicate the new wireless credentials only exists when the device is in setup mode, otherwise the device will simply keep looking for your old network(as is the case when your network goes down or you have a power outage)

With some of the new protocols, such as matter, device provisioning via Bluetooth is becoming more common, and you may be able to see this implemented in future devices.