This document describes techniques and apparatuses for releasing information to improve cell selection in different resource control states. To improve communication performance, a user equipment (UE) 110 releases dedicated cell-selection information 306, which may not be appropriate as the UE 110 moves to different geographical locations and transitions to different resource control states 218. Different situations cause the UE 110 to release the dedicated cell-selection information 306, including performing a cell-selection procedure in an inactive state that selects another cell that does not support the inactive state, processing a paging message 308, or transitioning from the inactive state to an idle state. By releasing the dedicated cell-selection information 306, the UE 110 performs a future cell-selection procedure without relying on the dedicated cell-selection information. As a result, the UE 110 can select an optimal cell for achieving a target communication performance in different resource control states 218.