It is every cellphone user’s nightmare. And alas, it comes true more often than one would like. We are talking of when your cellphone just seems to stop functioning normally - it might stop responding, keep restarting, freeze, behave erratically…and so on. The good news is that you do not need to hop onto your bicycle - or whichever vehicle you own - and head to the local cellphone service centre (to endure most cellphone manufacturers’ version of Chinese torture by support staff). You might be able to tackle matters yourself if you just follow these five simple steps and solve matters, if (and only if) your phone has not been physically damaged.
1. Just restart the phone. It’s amazing how often this works, just like in computers.
2. Still stuck? Take out the memory expansion card and restart the phone. A number of instances of phone lunacy can be traced to corrupt storage cards.
3. If all that does not work, pull out the battery from the phone, take out your sim card and then put them all back in and switch on the cell to see if things have changed.
4. It’s time to get the heavy guns out. Look up your handset’s manual and opt for a soft reset which will remove all the new applications you have installed on the phone but will keep most of your contacts and messages intact.
5. The final throw of the cellular dice. Do a hard reset. This wipes out everything - yes, everything - on your handset and brings it back exactly to the state it was when it came out of the factory. It will also wipe out all the data - contacts, messages, music, pictures, et al - on your phone, so do try to back up your data before you take this step.
If all these fail, then it is the support centre for you, alas.
