5 easy ways to fix smartphone freezing or no response problems
Having a smartphone malfunction cuts you off from your workflow, whether you are unable to communicate with your office or can’t access the software necessary to complete a task. The end result is lost productivity and frustration.
Sometimes a frozen phone can be “unfrozen” by doing something as simple as resetting the phone, but other times a freeze is one of the first symptoms of a bigger hardware or software problem. The goal when dealing with a malfunctioning phone is to fix the immediate problem, not just the symptom. So let’s have a close look on how to repair a frozen smartphone.
smartphone freezing or no response
1. Kill the APPs
Sometimes APPs do behave out of our control and go unresponsive. Whether that may have been because of a faulty APP code or your device’s low performance, you can kill the unresponsive APP to solve this problem. Here is how you will have to force close the APP:
Step 1. Use the Settings from the APP drawer or home screen to enter device settings. You can also use the notification shade and click the settings button to go to settings.
Step 2. Under Settings, find the ‘APPs’ or ‘Applications’ option. It will detail all the APPs on the phone.
Step 3. Once you are in the Apps section, you will see tabs on the top such as ‘Installed applications’, ‘Running Applications’etc. Tap on Running Applications tab and find the one that became unresponsive.
Step 4. Tap on the unresponsive APP and click the force close button to remove the app from memory.
Step 5. Reopen the APP and see if it works properly or not. If it doesn’t, uninstall and reinstall the APP.
2. Reboot or force restart your phone
Restarting your phone can free up the RAM in your phone and may solve the freezing problem. There are a few ways you can restart your phone. If your phone buttons are responsive, hold down the power button and follow the on screen instructions to shut down or restart. Some phones require taping the shutdown or restart button while some need the slider action. But in case your phone does not respond when you press buttons, you will then have to restart your phone manually. Android phones have a backdoor safety protocol that lets the user shut down the phone even when every button becomes unresponsive. Since different Android manufacturers keep different key combinations to force restart the phone, you will either need to search on the internet for your combination or try a few combinations yourself to see if any of them work. Usually holding down the power button for a few seconds restarts the phone. If it doesn’t, hold down the power button + volume up or volume down key until you see the boot-up logo.
3. Remove your battery
Another way is to take out the phone battery in order to force restart your phone. Note that this should only be used under most extreme circumstances since it can damage your phone. To do this, open your back cover and gently take out the battery to power off the device. Insert the battery again and hold down the power button to start the phone again. Although with the upcoming uni-body design phones, this option will not work as opening the back panel takes a lot of expertise and battery connections are very tricky these days compared to previous generation phones.
4. Hard resetting your phone
If your phone is still frozen after a boot or does not even boot up for some reason, you will then to hard reset your phone. Resetting will remove your personal data such as your contacts, SMS, passwords, APPs and settings. While resetting, make sure you do not erase the local storage or else you will also lose your personal files such as music, photos, videos and documents. Hard-resetting your phone is for intermediate to advanced users so if you are not good at tweaking with tech based on instructions alone, then let an expert handle it. Make sure your data has been backed up before resetting if you can as showed below.
Step 1. Turn off the device.
Step 2. Press a combination of keys here that will invoke the recovery mode on your device. some of common combinations are Samsung: Volume Up + Home + Power /Nexus: Volume Up + Volume Down + Power / Motorola: Home + Power.
You can Google your device’s key combination for recovery mode if you are still unsure. Press the combination buttons until you see the boot logo and recovery mode screen. You will now have to navigate through buttons and not the touchscreen. Only a few custom recoveries offer touch modes.
Pay attention, for Samsung Device, when you press and hold the Volume Up + Home + Power buttons, you will see the software update screen first, then you don’t need to do anything just wait for about two minutes until you see the recovery mode menu.
While in the recovery mode, choose to ‘Wipe the phone/Factory reset’ on the screen through the volume button and confirm using power buttons.
You will see a few options there which ask you whether to erase cache or partition or all data. Make sure not to select ‘Wipe all data’ or ‘Wipe partition’ or ‘Wipe local storage’.
Once you select to factory reset your phone, the phone will begin loading the resetting code on your phone. You will see a bunch of code appear on the screen displaying a series of functions it is performing. Once the resetting process is complete, your phone will restart and you will see a welcome screen. Set up your phone as a new device and see if your problem has been fixed or not.
5. Ask for professional repair
If the problem still persists, you may have a hardware problem. For any hardware problem, it is best to let the manufacturer look into it and repair or replace any damaged part. If you happen to use custom software such as custom recovery and custom ROM, you might be experiencing this issue because of the software as well. If that’s the case, then try installing the default software that came with the phone and see if the problem persists or not.
Conclusion
To conclude, when a device has frozen, many people take the battery out. This should be an absolute last resort, as you could damage your device. If you can’t remove the back cover of your device to get to the batter, don’t try to remove it. Instead, try a forced restart. If this doesn’t work, try plugging your device in and letting it charge for a few minutes before restarting it. Should the device still not work, the best thing to do is to bring it to a mobile expert.
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