Is resetting and restoring your iphone the same thing?

Now this may seem a little stupid, but I need to restore my iphone 4 so I can use a new sim card and I've been trying to restore for over an hour and it still says "contacting the iPhone software update server." But then I noticed that in my phone there's a reset all button.
Is this the same thing as I want to do as a restore? My phone has been backed up today.

No.

Reset is putting back all the settings on the phone as they were when it came out the box.
Restore is erasing all content & settings on the phone as it was when it came out the box.