General Device Troubleshooting

There’s nothing worse than when your smartphone isn’t working properly. The good news is that a few easy steps can help take care of common issues with your phone.

Restart

When in doubt, give your phone a quick break by turning it off and back on again. When you turn your phone off and on, you’re clearing out your phone’s temporary memory. This will help re-calibrate your phone and fix many hiccups in service or device performance.

Poor Cellular Reception

Simply turning your device off and back on again can have a tremendous impact on how its performing. This is especially true when it comes to finding a quick fix for device reception and network connection.

If you find you’re having connection trouble repeatedly, you may want to rest your network:

On an iPhone

On an Android

  1. Go to Settings
  2. Select General
  3. Then select Reset
  4. Press Reset network settings
  1. Go to Settings
  2. Select Backup & Reset
  3. Tap Reset settings

Resetting your networking settings won’t cause you to lose any files or information on your phone. However, you will need to re-enter Wi-Fi passwords that you may have previously saved.

Full Storage

Storage limitations can be especially irritating for smartphone users. Oftentimes, apps that aren’t in heavy rotation take up a lot of storage on smartphones. You may review which apps are taking up the most space, and decide to retire or remove some of the less frequented apps:

On an iPhone

On an Android

  1. Go to Settings
  2. Select General
  3. Select Storage & iCloud Usage
  4. Select Manage Storage
  1. Go to Settings
  2. Select Storage

Delete any apps you don’t use regularly to make room on your smartphone. You may also want to transfer photos, messages and music to a cloud service or an external hard drive.

Password problems

Attempting to remember the completely unique passwords for each of your apps can get a bit overwhelming. Instead of storing that information away in your brain, let your smartphone do the work for you. Apple and Android devices both offer easy solutions for saving passwords.

On an iPhone

On an Android

  1. Go to Settings
  2. Select Accounts & Passwords
  3. Select App & Website Passwords
  4. Review and update the apps you have stored passwords for
  1. Go to Settings
  2. Select General
  3. Select Security
  4. Select Smart Lock

If you prefer, there are several reliable apps that can help you manage your passwords and help keep your information safe. CREDO Mobile recommends 1Password or LastPass.