How to force restart a frozen Android phone

For the most part, our smartphones don’t really have too many issues that would affect day-to-day usage. Unfortunately, just like our laptops or desktops, there might be a time when you find your phone frozen and touching or tapping on the screen doesn’t evoke any kind of response.

Before you panic, know that sometimes our devices do freeze up. It doesn’t happen too often (at least from our experience), but when it does, it can be a bit unnerving. The good news is that your phone (probably) isn’t broken and all it needs is a force restart and it should be good again.

Force restart a frozen Android phone

1. Press and hold the power button for about 30 seconds
   • For some Android phones like Samsung, you can try pressing the volume down button and power button for about 15 seconds. If that doesn’t work, you can just press and hold the power button for up to 30 seconds
2. The screen should now be powered off
3. You might feel a tiny vibration to indicate that your phone is restarting
4. Your phone’s brand logo should now appear
5. Congratulations! Your phone has been successfully restarted

Take note that there could be several reasons why your phone is freezing. Sometimes it could be due to a bug in the operating system, which would be hard to tell. Sometimes it could also be due to storage issues, where if you’re running low on storage space, freezing can happen.

If you find yourself having to force restart regularly, then there could be something wrong like a buggy app. You might also need to perform a factory reset if the problem persists, but this is usually a last resort because factory resetting will wipe all your data in the process.

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