Is your phone stuck on the bootloop or you are unable to use your phone because it keeps on freezing randomly? Use our in-depth troubleshooting guide to fix your Android device.
Are you suffering Android phone freezing troubles and unexpected apps stopping issues that won’t let you use your phone or tablet device? And you can’t really figure out how to remedy the problem. Don’t worry as you have come to the correct spot since here we have a detailed in-depth step-by-step instruction to help you troubleshoot, analyse, and fix the issue, once and for all.
I can understand how it feels like when you are trying to use your Android device to make a simple phone call or maybe you have opened a camera to snap a picture but your gadget is stuck and frozen, and it won’t let you do anything. And this situation makes you feel like throwing your smartphone away.
Believe it or not, unexpected freezing of your Android phone, crashing of apps and unresponsiveness are the key symptoms that your Android device has some form of app or software issue and can be fixed all by yourself without taking it to the warranty or service facility.
To help resolve the freezing, unresponsiveness, and the crashing issue of your Android device, I have collected a list of seven techniques that you have to go through one by one and follow it to diagnose your problem and ultimately solve it.
#1. Have you tried resetting your phone?
Please don’t start rolling your eyes after reading this question. If you have ever called an IT support guy, whether you had a problem related to the computer, Internet, or printer; you can anticipate them to ask you the very first question, Have you tried turning it off and on again?
This question is so frequently asked that it has become an IT support buzzword. And when this issue is posed, people begin to wonder what the IT specialist is compensated for. Are they lazy?
Sometimes people are so fed up with the situation they are having that they just say, “Yes, I have already done that,” even when they know they haven’t. However, you might be surprised to learn that rebooting your Android phone actually resolves a lot of problems.
This leads us to the question:
How can a mobile phone’s freezing problem be resolved by rebooting it?
We all use our mobile phones without restarting it for several days or weeks, and throughout this time period we regularly open and dismiss various programs, sometimes install a new app or two and maybe uninstall other apps. Over the course of a few days, each of these actions leaves a trace in the memory and storage that the system no longer needs.
This overloads the processor as well as the memory utilisation, which in turn causes Android phone freezing difficulties. And the quickest way to delete this unwanted footprint from your mobile phone and repair the freezing issue is to restart the device.
Now, go over to the following part where I have prepared to an easy method to assist you restart your frozen Android phone
How to restart Android phone when it is frozen and not responding?
Due to the number of Android phone manufacturers and diversity in the models, the processes of rebooting the device vary a lot. But when your Android device is stuck and not responding at all, I have covered nearly every option for hard resetting it. You can try one method at a time and see if it works for you or not.
The first option involves utilising your device’s physical power button alone. You have to press and hold the Power button for maybe around 3 seconds, then the menu will show with the option to Power off and Restart your device. Only if your device is running the most recent version of Android OS will you be able to see the restart option.
In case there is no restart choice on the screen then just tap the Power off option, and once the device completely shuts down, then you have to press and hold the Power button for about two to six seconds to turn the device back on.
The second method: It is when we do Hard Restart or Hard Reboot. This method is extremely important in those circumstances when your Android device is frozen, and the first method of restarting is not working.
The procedure is to press and hold the Power button for fifteen to thirty seconds. During this moment, your frozen gadget should automatically power down and start again. Proceed to the next method if this one fails.
The third approach, which is advised if the first one didn’t work, is an additional way to hard reboot or hard restart your frozen Android device. If the user presses and holds a particular button combination, the majority of Android devices are pre-programmed to either restart or shut down entirely.
Therefore, you should try using the Power and Volume Down buttons together on your device. And you need to hold both of these buttons for roughly fifteen to thirty seconds. If this worked, then your device will shut down and restart. If not then you can attempt the next technique.
The fourth approach involves performing a Hard Reboot or Hard Restart utilising a different pre-programmed button sequence. Here you will be needed to hold two buttons simultaneously, i.e., the Power button and the Volume Up button. You have to press and hold these two buttons for fifteen to thirty seconds. Additionally, your phone ought to restart at this period.
In case none of those ways described above worked for you then the last sequence is to press and hold all three buttons, i.e., Power button, Volume Down button, and Volume Up button for roughly ten to twenty-five seconds. Your frozen Android phone should be forced to restart as a result.
The fifth strategy: If the previous one didn’t work either, I’d advise you to take the battery out of your phone to force a shutdown, then put it back in and switch it back on.
Removal of your Android phone’s battery is only possible if your phone has a removable battery, otherwise, if your phone has a fixed battery then I will encourage you to skip this section.
#2. Check for any new device software update
If restarting didn’t fix the Android phone unexpectedly freezing issues then there are chances that your phone is lacking fresh vital updates and bug patches from the device maker that might fix the bothersome freezing problem.
If there is a software bug in the underlying Android operating system files, your phone may start to malfunction or freeze. And acquiring the newest Android upgrades and putting it on your mobile phone will provide performance enhancements along with security patches and bug fixes.
In most of the cases, automatic software updates are enabled by default on the Android mobile phones and tablet devices, which is preprogrammed to receive the most recent updates from the servers and download it onto your device on its own.
How to manually check for the updates on Android phone?
Though, in case, if the automatic update option is blocked, then there is a manual option to force check for the new updates on your device manually. The following are the steps to accomplish that:
Please be aware that the instructions may differ slightly depending on the Android smartphone you are using.
- Go to Settings.
- You can find the About device or Software update options by scrolling to the bottom of the settings page. Press it.
- Click “Download updates manually.”
Using this option will compel your device to check whether the most recent software updates are loaded on your device or not. If any new update is identified, then your device should automatically start downloading it.
The Android system will prompt you to install the update and make adjustments after the update file has been downloaded. To start installing the most recent Android operating system update, just tap the Install now option. However, in order to prevent an unplanned shutdown during the update process, your phone’s battery must be at least 80% charged before you tell it to begin the installation.
#3. Check if your phone has enough free internal storage space
Android operating system not only need RAM to run solidly (as you could have heard from a lot of people) but it also needs sufficient free storage space in the internal memory to accomplish all the tasks promptly without any delays.
Let’s imagine if your device has an internal storage space of 32GB and your data has eaten roughly 90 to 95 percent of this storage then you are going to face a large quantity of lags as well as phone freezing troubles. And this freezing issue will occur even if your Android phone has more RAM like somewhere around 8GB of RAM.
I’ll explain why this occurs
:
Android phones installed with the minimal number of apps, let’s say somewhere around 3 to 5 regularly used social media apps like Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and Twitter, will demand less free storage space. However, the necessity for Android for free storage space will also increase when the number of apps installed on your phone starts to rise.
#4. Check for slow or faulty external storage SD card Android phone
manufactures included a great feature in the smartphones and tablet devices, i.e. SD card, which allows users to expand the storage space and store additional media content like photos, videos, movies, and even some apps that won’t usually fit into the phone’s internal storage. But as I have already discussed in the previous section about how Android operating system is designed to use cache data to speed up the performance of the Android phones, so using an SD card to store your data will force the Android OS to create cache data for all the content stored in the external storage. Even though this functionality is designed in such a way to makes it easier for the operating system to remember where the files are stored. But this same functionality negatively influences the performance of your phone and causes it to freeze. This same cache building functionality makes the situation worse in those cases when you have a corrupted file stored in the SD card, and Android media indexer tries to continually generate a cache or thumbnail preview of that media file. This might sometimes cause Android phone freezing problems. According to a research that was conducted by the NEC Laboratories America on the impact of performance on Android devices due to the SD card:
So as already indicated in the research conclusion, the usage of SD card directly affects the entire performance of your Android phone.
Moreover, in the market, you are to find some cheap micro SD cards that promise to offer you over 16GB or 32GB of storage and are Class 10. But these flash storage cards will stop working if you put data exceeding 7GB or 8GB. This may cause your Android mobile phone to freeze, giving you sluggish read/write rates, unexpected slowdowns, as well as lags in performance, will occur too.
To overcome this issue, I will urge you to invest in a better microSD card, specifically those cards that provide a faster reading and writing speeds. Also, you need to be sure that you are not migrating any commonly used apps, especially those apps that stay running in the background, to your external SD storage.
#5. Try removing programs that you have just installed
Having quick access to millions of free and paid apps via the Google Play Store is one of the main benefits of owning a smartphone running the Android operating system. Additionally, there are hundreds and thousands of apps in each of the Play Store’s more than 40 distinct categories.
Additionally, it’s possible that you installed a problematic program that’s making your smartphone unresponsive and freezing. Don’t know how that is going to happen? Read the next part where I have explained the potential
How installing apps could cause Android phone to freeze?
There are times when we are seeking for a specific program in the store, for example let’s say an app for embedding GIFs within the WhatsApp or Messenger chats, the search for the term GIF is going to offer you thousands of apps, and you opt to handpick roughly six of them and install it on your phone.
Despite the fact that it’s a straightforward application created to provide rapid access to the database of GIFs that have already been published, you can also add a quick search shortcut to your keyboard. But little do you know about how much is being performed at the backend of the software, how well the developers have built it, and if all the faults have been appropriately ironed out before exposing it to the public.
Therefore, the malfunctioning app may cause your phone or tablet to unexpectedly stop after a week or so of using the six apps you recently loaded on your device. And you won’t be able to figure out what’s creating the issue.
#6. As a last option, reset your phone’s factory data.
As I have previously indicated in the header, if all the other techniques that I have discussed above failed to cure your Android phone freezing or unresponsiveness issue then the final resort is to factory data reset your phone.
Doing this will revert your gadget to its original state when you initially acquired it from the shop. All of the personalisation will be removed, all the saved data will be destroyed including images and videos, and all the apps will be uninstalled too. Therefore, before starting a factory data reset on your phone, it is advised to make a backup of all your vital data.
Also, you must have to make sure you remember your Google account details like login and password because all of your contacts, calendar entries, and other pertinent data are synced there. And only once you log in to the account on your device will these Google account details be immediately restored following a reset.
How do I reset my Android device’s factory data?
In case you don’t know, the Android operating system comes with a built-in restore capability that makes it easy for the phone users to get over the circumstances like freezing or unresponsiveness by conducting a factory data reset.
It’s crucial to let you know that there are two ways to reset your phone or tablet before we move on to the steps for doing a factory data reset. Depending on your current circumstances, you may need to choose one of these techniques.
Disclaimer:
This guide is just designed to be used for information and education. All of the steps for correcting problems that are listed are typical Android features and recommended practices. Depending on the device’s type, software version, and usage style, the results could vary. Before doing complex activities like a factory reset, users should back up vital data. If you don’t follow the directions correctly, the author is not responsible for any problems with your device or data loss.a