Lumia Stuck/Froze/Hangs? Learn How to Fix!

Credit: MyNokiaBlog

Even if Windows Phones are one of the smoothest and fastest mobile platforms I've ever seen in my entire life, its not short of random freezes and hang-ups. Its really frustrating to see your phone freeze randomly while making important calls or while using an app or while updating an app. Its natural for all phones to hang up sometime or the other. Maybe due to an unhanded exception or a bad call or an app trig erring the glitches.

I've experienced one such freezing on my Lumia 920 just a few days after my buy and I was terribly annoyed. For me, the problem was the phone wouldn't unlock even if the soft-keys are still glowing. I tried to hold the power button and it rebooted but it got stuck on the Nokia logo. I've waited for about half an hour but nothing happened. Since Lumia 920 doesn't have a removable battery, I wasn't able to test the phone after removing the battery. So, I got worried. But later, I found out the ways to reset the phone without losing the data on your phone. Its called 'Soft Reset' and after resetting, my phone bypassed the logo and entered the home screen. Later, I found out that the Here Drive was causing an issue and I removed it and the problem didn't occur again afterwards.

But its not just the soft-reset which can wake up your phone from random freezes. There are other ways too. So, here, I'll cover-up the ways to recover your phone if it suddenly goes dead. As far as I'm aware, these work if your phone is:

• Randomly rebooting itself.
• Got stuck at the logo screen and can't pass through.
• Got stuck at the rotating cogs during an update.

#1 Soft-Reset and Battery Removal

These are the first things to try if your phone freezes. If you are having a phone with a removable battery, then remove the battery from the phone and reinsert it into the holder and turn on your phone. You can also try the soft-reset method but this should do the trick and soft-reset is intended for non-removable battery phones.

For phones having a non-removable battery, soft-reset might do the trick. Hold the Volume Button + Power Button (Lock Button) for about 15 seconds until you hear a vibration and the phone reboots. Now, you should be able to get past the freezes. Note that doing a soft-reset may reset your phone's time. Make sure to update the time after your phone reboots.

#2 Draining the Battery and Charging Again

Remove the SIM card and MicroSD if any and let the phone aside till the battery drains out completely and the phone switches off. Now, connect the phone to a charger and wait for it to turn itself on automatically (Don't turn it on manually).

#3 Hard-Reset

If the above given solutions doesn't work, then you can try Hard-Reset to wipe your phone completely and start over again. Make sure you backup all the stuff before proceeding further.

To do a hard-reset, do the following steps sequentially:

1. Remove the battery and reinsert it if the phone has a removable battery.
2. Now, hold Camera + Power + Volume Down buttons until your phone vibrates and then release the Power Key and keep holding the other two keys for 5-6 seconds and release them.
3. Hard reset takes quite a lot of time and leave the phone for about an hour till it reboots and shows the home screen.
4. Hard-Reset rolls back to the factory-installed OS version and hence you may need to do update your phone.

If nothing works, its best to hand the case over to the Nokia Care experts. Visit the nearest Nokia Care center if you cant fix this yourself. If you've bought a new phone, you may even get a brand new device as a replacement if the phone's faulty or if the OS is corrupted. Yes, there are chances for that and a lot of people already got their devices replaced.

#5 Prevention

As I said at the beginning of this post, its hard to hunt down the real cause for such random freezes. I've studied my Lumia 920 a lot and researched a lot to find the root cause of my hangs and it was the Nokia Drive. Soon after the app got an update, there weren't further problems.

If your phone gets stuck randomly at some point like when calling or while simply browsing around the home screen, then it could be some problems within the OS itself and its natural. You must wait for an update to fix such random issues.

If you get these hangs while using an application or while playing a particular game, then it maybe the app/game that's triggering the hangs. Try removing the app for a few days and see if the problem persists. If it doesn't, then its the app that's causing the issue and you may need to wait for an update to patch this issue before you can use the app again.

If any of the above methods helped you fix the phone, do leave a comment below to let me know. Also, if you're having any other alternatives to fix such issues, share it with me by leaving a comment. I will make sure I update the post with new solutions.