Soft reset and rebooting.

[mbabee]

So I've been trying to find a way to soft reset my phone. I Googled it and found a few different sites that said conflicting things. One said to press the power button for 20 seconds. Another said to press the home and power buttons for 20 seconds. All this one did was take a screen shot. I literally held each combination for over a minute. I even went to my local store and they said to gold power button for 30 seconds, which we did, and nothing happened. They were confused and couldn't help me. Said it worked on other N4s.

So I finally read about turning your phone off, and then holding the volume up, home and power buttons simultaneously until the blue lettering pops up. I was hesitant because I didn't want to accidently factory reset my phone.

Well, the screen came up. I let go and it looked for an update. No update. Then I got the little blue menu where it said to use the volume buttons as a cursor and power button to select. I selected "reboot" and then the little android guy appeared, on his back and "error" popped up underneath him and it started normally.

Anyone know what happened or what this is? Has anyone had this happen to them?

 

[FBA]

They all do it...my 3 and 4 do the same thing...but if you want to do a proper "soft reset", it's like this:


1) Power down the phone
2) Press and hold the following buttons:
3) Home
4) Volume UP
5) Then press power
6) Let go all three when the phone boots
7) Phone may decide to update itself at this time - and let it do it if it tries to.
7) Use the volume up/ down to navigate to "Wipe Cache Partition", then press power
8) Once the partition clears, volume up/ down (if required) to "reboot system now"
9) Press power to restart the phone

You're done!

 

[jpr]

A soft reset is powering off the phone and powering it back on, both of which are easily achieved with the power button. Are you saying you are unable to turn off your phone or are you using the wrong term?

 

[FBA]

He's not saying that at all...

 

[jpr]

He's not saying that at all...

Well a soft reset is exactly what I said it is. It only has one meaning. So the OP should say what they mean if they want help. What you described is clearing the cache partition, which is very different than a soft reset. All I'm saying is the poster should clarify what they want to do since the term they are using means powering off the phone and turning it back on.

 

[FBA]

Ease up on the guy...not everyone who comes knows everything you claim to...that's why people come here to ask the questions...

 

[jpr]

Ease up on the guy...not everyone who comes knows everything you claim to...that's why people come here to ask the questions...

I wasn't being hard on him or her at all. I was trying to help so was trying to find out what they were actually trying to accomplish.

 

[mbabee]

Thanks for the help everyone. I used the term soft reset because that's what I've come to understand it as. That it'll reset your phone, but it's "soft" because you don't lose any data. I can and do power off my phone, by just pressing the power button and selecting power off.

I just tried to do the rebooting now. It's still not working..

So I pressed the power button, selected power off. Once screen was powered off, I held the volume up button, Home button, and the power button. I held those until the reboot screen showed up. I highlighted "reboot" and pressed the power button to select, and it said error. This is the third time it's done it.

I hope this clarifies my problem. And thank you so much for replying!! My phone is getting so laggy and apps are starting to freeze up

 

[jpr]

When you get the error message when you try to reboot in recovery, does it proceed to reboot after the error or does it stay stuck in recovery? If it reboots, that's not something to be overly concerned about. That happened to me after an OTA update but everything still functions normally. If it is stuck in recovery though then of course that is a problem.

There really isn't anything that resets the phone without erasing data other than the soft reset. You can add pulling the battery for a minute. Sometimes that can resolve some issues that stay stuck because the phone is never truly off with the battery in it, even when powered down.

So, if you've done a soft reset, a battery pull, and a cache partition clear and still have problems, then you are running out of options. You may need to just finally do the factory reset to get your phone functioning smoothly again.

You can try booting into safe mode, which disables third party apps to see if it is an app you installed that is the problem. This will reset your homescreen widgets but will not erase any other data. Here are safe mode instructions - should work for any model: http://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-14673

Edit: Also, if you have an SD card in, take that out and see if it improves.

 

[mbabee]

When I get the error message, it just starts turning on. I'm not sure if that means it's rebooting or not. I don't think it is, because it's not fixing any issues, not helping it run faster, and all of my recent apps are still in the same order, and if I open my gallery app for example, it'll be on the same picture that it was on last time I browsed, as opposed to showing me all my albums, if that makes sense. Before when I've done soft resets, there would be nothing on recent apps.

I'll try a battery pull next... what happens when you do a cache partition clear?

If all of this fails, I guess I'll try booting in safe mode. Thanks again!

 

[jpr]

When I get the error message, it just starts turning on. I'm not sure if that means it's rebooting or not. I don't think it is, because it's not fixing any issues, not helping it run faster, and all of my recent apps are still in the same order, and if I open my gallery app for example, it'll be on the same picture that it was on last time I browsed, as opposed to showing me all my albums, if that makes sense. Before when I've done soft resets, there would be nothing on recent apps.

I'll try a battery pull next... what happens when you do a cache partition clear?

If all of this fails, I guess I'll try booting in safe mode. Thanks again!

Clearing the cache partition clears temporary data used by the system.