Why Your Phone Randomly Restarts and How to Fix It
Your phone shuts down right in the middle of a text message, or maybe it drops a call for no reason at all. Sometimes it reboots itself as you’re trying to get to a big meeting. The reminder that you were working on just disappears. Or maybe your alarm never goes off because the phone decided to restart itself at 3 AM. Every one of these little interruptions might not feel like much by itself. But they add up over time and the device you depend on the most starts to feel more like a liability than a tool!
Random phone restarts are something millions run into all of the time, and the price of your device won’t protect you from it. A $1,000 iPhone can restart just as randomly as a budget Android phone. A few different factors cause this. Sometimes it’s a software problem where two apps aren’t working well together. Other times your battery has aged to the point where it just can’t supply enough power anymore. And occasionally your phone will actually force a restart when it detects it’s running too hot inside. Every time your phone restarts on its own, it’s trying to either fix a problem or to stop real damage to the hardware.
Usually, you can stop these random restarts without ever needing to visit a repair shop or spend hundreds of dollars on a replacement device - you just need the right fix for whatever happens to be behind the problem.
What Happens When Your Phone Overheats
Most modern phones actually have a built-in safety feature that forces an automatic restart when the internal temperature climbs too high. This happens because extreme heat can do damage to main parts like the processor and the battery. Once the internal temperature hits around 95 degrees Fahrenheit (or higher), the phone will usually trigger this protective restart on its own to stop any permanent harm.
Your phone can overheat for a handful of reasons and most of them are pretty simple to avoid when you know what to watch for. Direct sunlight is probably the biggest culprit - leaving your phone on a car dashboard during a hot summer afternoon will heat it up like a small oven in just a few minutes. Apps that demand lots of processing power can also cause problems. When your processor has to work harder than usual, it generates extra heat from that activity.
Charging your phone and using it at the same time adds two different heat sources to the mix. Your battery generates heat just from charging alone and if you’re also streaming video or running multiple apps, the internal temperature can shoot up pretty fast. All that extra heat is usually the culprit behind those random restarts that happen right in the middle of what you’re doing.
Most modern smartphones will actually warn you before it gets too hot. A temperature warning message will show up right on your screen and the phone won’t shut itself down until after that warning pops up and it gives you at least some time to save whatever you were working on or finish up what you had open.
A few basic habits will help you skip these overheating shutdowns completely. Take your phone case off whenever you plug it in to charge - the case works like a blanket and traps all that heat right up against your phone’s body. Try to leave your phone out of direct sunlight whenever possible. When your phone starts to feel warm in your hand, close out any apps that you don’t actually need right then and give it a few minutes to just sit and cool back down.
When Your Battery Can’t Keep Up
Your camera app and games pull a massive amount of battery power when they run - far more than most other apps on your phone. An old or worn-down battery just doesn’t have the capacity left to handle that sudden power demand. What happens is that your phone tries to draw the energy it needs to run at full speed. The battery just can’t supply that much power fast enough anymore. At that point your phone recognizes the problem and forces itself to shut down rather than risk any damage to any of the internal parts.
For iPhone users, checking your battery’s health is pretty easy. Just open up Settings and tap on Battery and then choose Battery Health. Android phones work a little differently though. The majority of Android devices don’t have this feature already built into the operating system and you’ll need to download a third-party app to get the same battery health information. AccuBattery is a solid choice that has the same data you’d be able to see on an iPhone.
Track when your phone restarts on its own and watch for patterns over time. Maybe it always shuts down right around 30% of battery left or maybe it’s at 20%. Your camera app seems to kill it almost every time you open it. Patterns like these are a pretty reliable indicator that your battery just can’t hold a steady charge level anymore.
Back in 2017 Apple caught a lot of heat when they slowed down older iPhones and didn’t tell anyone about it. Customers weren’t happy when they found out they’d been kept in the dark about what was going on. The reason that Apple did this was to solve this exact battery issue. When batteries get older and start to wear down, they can’t supply enough power to match what the phone needs from them. Apple slowed down the performance on those older devices so they wouldn’t shut down without warning. From their perspective it was a trade-off that was worth making between a phone that runs slower and one that randomly restarts on you.
Simple Steps to Fix Your Phone
The first place to look is probably going to be the easiest fix. Check to see if your phone has any software updates ready to install. Updates can be annoying to have to wait for. But they usually include fixes for common bugs and random restarts.
Apps are one of the most common causes of random restart problems and it’s especially true if you’ve added something new to your phone recently. Go back through your memory (or check your download history) and see what you have installed in the last week or two. When the timing lines up between a new app installation and when your restart problems started, that app is probably the source of your headache. Delete it from your phone and then watch how it performs over the next day or so.
Storage space has a big effect on how well your device runs and you might not see it until problems start popping up. When a phone or tablet fills up completely, it struggles with even basic tasks. Sometimes the device will restart on its own just to free up enough memory to stay running. A helpful guideline is to leave at least 10% of your total storage open at all times.
Your phone’s battery usage stats can help you a lot when you’re trying to track down problem apps. Pull up your settings menu and check through the list - you want to find any apps that are draining a lot more power than they should be. The apps that are killing your battery the fastest are also the same culprits behind those random restarts.
Android owners have one more option that is worth trying - clearing out the system cache. Your phone stores temporary files in this cache area to help it run faster and over time these files can get corrupted and start to drag down your phone’s performance. The exact process will be a bit different depending on which phone model you have, though most Android devices will let you access this feature in either the storage section or the apps section of your settings menu.
Random restart problems are very frustrating to work through. But most of them can be solved without ever having to call tech support. Work through each one of these steps in order and after each one, give it a day or two to see if it worked. That waiting period matters because it’s the only way to confirm if the problem is actually solved or if you’ll have to move on to the next fix.
Factory Reset as Your Final Option
A factory reset can be your best option to try after the standard fixes have failed to work. What a factory reset does is wipe everything clean from your phone and restore it back to the exact condition that it was in on day one - fresh out of the box with nothing on it. Make sure to back up all your data first before the reset starts, because when you do this, everything will be permanently gone.
Your photos and videos are going to need somewhere safe to land before anything else - you can use either your computer or a cloud storage service for this, and both work very well. Don’t skip over your contacts and messages either. iPhone users actually have it pretty easy on this front since iCloud can take care of the backup work automatically. Just head into your settings menu and tap on your Apple ID (it’s right there at the top) and then choose iCloud Backup to get the process started. Android devices work the same way through Google’s backup service, and the option is in your settings under the System menu.
After you have everything backed up (and please don’t skip that step!), the reset process itself is pretty easy. On an iPhone, open up Settings and then tap on General. Scroll down to the very bottom and you’ll see an option for Transfer or Reset iPhone - that’s the one you want. Android phones work a little differently depending on which company made your device. Samsung, Google and most other manufacturers put the reset option in Settings as well, usually under either System or General Management.
You’re looking at an 80% success rate and that’s even in situations where every other fix has already been tried and failed. The reason it works is because it wipes out the corrupted files and fixes any app conflicts that have been piling up over months of regular use. A clean software installation gives your phone the ability to start over fresh without having to carry all that accumulated baggage around anymore.
The whole process takes about 1 hour from start to finish. Your phone is going to restart a few times during the reset - that’s normal and just a part of how it works. After the reset completes, you’ll need to go through the first setup screens again just like the first time you opened up your phone. Once that’s done, you can restore your backed-up data back onto the device.
How to Prevent Future Phone Restarts
Software updates from Apple and Google are one of the best ways to make sure your phone stays stable and reliable over time. iOS 17 and Android 14 have better memory management built in, so your phone won’t restart on you nearly as much after you install them. These updates also pack in fixes for all kinds of bugs that would otherwise cause random crashes at the worst possible times.
The way you charge your phone actually makes a much bigger difference for long-term battery life than it gets credit for. The charger that came in the box with your device is always going to be the safer and better choice for everyday use - generic cables and wall adapters might work when you need them quickly. But they don’t always deliver the same level of steady power. Overnight charging is convenient and it’s pretty common. But leaving your phone plugged in night after night puts continuous stress on the battery components. After a few months of this habit, the battery can start to develop power regulation problems that lead to random restarts throughout your normal day.
One of the easiest steps you can take is to restart it at least once a week to clean up the temporary files that pile up and keep at least 10 to 15% of your storage space free at all times. When the storage fills up, your phone has to work much harder for basic operations, and this will cause performance problems. It’s also worth checking which apps run in the background when you’re not on them and closing those out whenever you can.
Every once in a while, the problem runs a bit deeper compared to what any software fix can handle. If your phone continues restarting even after you’ve completed a full factory reset, you’re probably looking at a hardware issue by that point. Memory chips can fail as your phone ages, and when they do, they cause repeated restart behavior. A repair professional is probably going to be your best option at this stage because they can test each internal component and find out what has failed.
Trade Your Old Phone for Cash Today
Random restarts are frustrating and they always seem to happen at the worst possible time. Most of them can be fixed at home without paying for a technician or a trip to the repair shop. We’ve covered the main culprits that cause your phone to restart - software glitches, overheating and battery problems that can’t deliver the power the way they should. These problems have at least one fix you can try on your own. You might need to uninstall a problematic app or you might just need to let your phone cool down for a bit. In the worst case scenario, a factory reset could be the answer when nothing else seems to work.
Eventually though, older phones just start to show their age in a few ways all at once. Once you’ve already gone through the troubleshooting steps and your phone is still giving you problems, or if the battery is shot and other issues pop up one after another, it’s probably time to upgrade to something that’ll actually work when you need it to.
When your phone starts to show its age and you’re ready to move on to something new, at ecoATM, we make it pretty simple to turn your old one into cash right then and there. We operate over 6,000 kiosks all across the country and the whole process is about as simple as it gets - just bring in your phone, get a quote right there and walk out with your payment on the same day (or have your payout sent to you in minutes if you want). It’s a solid way to recycle your old phone while picking up some money to put toward your next one. Just find a kiosk near you and see what your phone is worth!
