Like any other android devices in the market today, Samsung Galaxy S4 is also not free from flaws and could experience various of issues every now and then. In today's post, I'll feature the freezing and rebooting issue, in which some of the Galaxy S4 users were always complaining for several months now. As a matter of fact, there are only two-factors that these issues occur in the device, either your firmware is using corrupted data or the phone itself has hardware problem. But since it's too early to jump over to the conclusion, the best thing that you need to do is to isolate first the issue by ruling-out each and every possibility until we can reach to the solution. Here are the methods that you should do:
Step 1: Perform the battery-pull procedure
Before you can do any troubleshooting methods on your Galaxy S4, we suggest that you should do first the battery-pull procedure to eliminate the suspicion that a minor glitch in the system is not causing it. Doing this step, will refresh phone's memory and close all apps running in the background. So, if this just a minor issue, then your phone will back to its normal pace after you do so.
After removing the back cover as well as the battery, press the Power key for 1 minute to be sure that all electricity stored in the hardware components will be released. After that, turn on your phone and use it to see if the issue will still occur. If the device still freezing and rebooting, move to the next step.
Step 2: Restart it in Safe mode
In this environment, we will try to figure it out if one of the applications installed on your phone is culprit and causing the problem. Through safe mode, all third-party applications will be disabled from the system and only the pre-installed ones will be left running. So, while in this state, let the device run for several hours to see if it will still freeze and restarts. If the issue is not anymore happening, then, there's an app you need to find and uninstall to get rid the problem.
To boot the Galaxy S4 in safe mode, follow this:
- Turn the device off completely.
- Press and hold the Power button.
- Once the Samsung Galaxy S4 logo appears on the screen, release the Power button.
- As soon as you release the Power button, Press and hold the Volume Down key.
- Continue holding the Volume Down key until the phone has completed the reboot process.
- If you can read 'Safe mode' at the bottom left corner of the screen, release the Volume Down key. Otherwise, repeat the process until you can boot the phone in safe mode.
However, after uninstalling all third-party apps and the issue still the same, proceed to the next procedure.
Step 3: Wipe the Cache Partition
Since, booting in safe mode and uninstalling all apps is not helping the issue, so, the next thing that you should do is to wipe its cache partition. This will delete all old files and data stored in the system so that fresher ones will be created and could be loaded easily to the firmware. These are the steps:
- Turn the phone off completely.
- Press and hold Volume Up, Home and Power buttons.
- Release the Power button when the phone vibrates but continue holding on to the Volume Up and Home buttons.
- When the Android System Recovery screen appears, release both the Home and Volume Up buttons.
- Using the Volume Down key, highlight 'Wipe cache partition'.
- Press the Power button to select the option.
- The phone will automatically restart once cache and data wiped out.
After the method, use again your phone and observe if the performance is improving. But if the problem still persists, then, you don't have a choice but to the reset.
Step 4: Do the Master reset
Performing a reset on your phone should be the last resort that you should do especially if all previous procedures didn't resolve the problem. But before you proceed and do the steps we recommend you to create a backup for all your personal files because all will be deleted. Just transfer everything to your SD card or personal computer if you have one. Here's how to do the reset:
- Turn the phone off completely.
- Press and hold the Volume Up, Home and Power buttons.
- Release the Power button when the phone vibrates but continue holding on to the Volume Up and Home buttons.
- When the Android System Recovery appears, release both the Home and Volume Up buttons.
- Using the Volume Down key, highlight 'wipe data/factory reset.
- Press the Power button to select it.
- Using the Volume Down button again, highlight' delete all user data.'
- Press the Power key to select it.
- Once the reset is complete, choose 'Reboot System now.'
- Press the Power button to restart the phone.
But if after all those steps and the performance still the same, then, we suggest that you should bring it to the repair shop for the phone itself is defective and needs to be checked by the tech.