What would cause my Verizon DroidMaxx to shut itself off?

[AC Question]

It has done this 2-3 times in the past few days. There's not much detail. It just shuts off and I have to turn it back on.

 

[Kerias]

Water damage, overheating battery, system crash due to a buggy app. If water damage isn't the issue, you should be able to fix this by uninstalling power draining apps.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[Rukbat]

Settings/General/Battery. Tap the graph to get the second page. Look for a steep drop to 0 or almost 0 when the phone shut off. If you see that the battery is growing a dendrite, and will have to be replaced. (See Lithium Battery Dendrite links for more than you want to know.)

Otherwise, it could be water damage (or even condensation damage showing up months later). I doubt very much if a buggy system or app will just shut the phone off. Lock it up, yes, shut it off, no. (An overheating battery is a symptom, not a cause and won't, by itself, shut the phone off. A battery that grows a thick dendrite will probably overheat, but it's the dendrite that's the problem, the heat is caused by the dendrite, it's not the cause of the problem.)

Power draining apps will only shut the phone off if they drain the battery down past its shutoff point, and you should never let the battery get below 40%, so that wouldn't be a cause of shutting off either.