Our technology editor answers your trickiest tech questions
Check for an update: a Galaxy S23
My phone keeps freezing and turning itself off. It does this about four or five times a day. It’s a Samsung and it’s about five years old. Is there some way to fix it myself?
— Lorraine O’Connor
Answer
If possible, try to check that it’s up to speed with the latest Android update from Samsung. You can check this by going into ‘settings’ and then ‘software update’. It should tell you what version you are and whether you need to update it. (Don’t worry, updates are free.)
Sometimes an older version of a phone’s interface can cause it to glitch a little bit. If that doesn’t fix it, try shutting the phone off completely for a minute or so and turning it back on. I know this sounds obvious, but most of us never actually switch our phones off – we just send them to sleep or into ‘do not disturb’ mode at night while they charge.
If that still doesn’t work, you might consider doing a compete reset of the phone. Again, you can do this in settings by choosing ‘general management’ and then ‘reset’ (or just do a search in settings for the word ‘reset’).
It’s very important to back things up before you do this, though. You’ll have to do this individually twice (at least); once for WhatsApp (if you use this) and once for everything else. To back up WhatsApp on a Samsung phone, you need to allow chat backup to Google Drive within WhatsApp’s own settings on your phone. For the rest, you can go to ‘settings’, then ‘accounts and backup’ and then, under Google Drive, ‘back up data’. If you want to be extra safe, you’d also back up on Samsung’s Cloud, again under ‘settings’ and then ‘accounts and backup’.
If none of that works, then it’s a judgment call on whether it’s worth going to get it looked at by a repair shop or getting a new one. If was a sub-€300 phone, it might not be worth repairing from a cost perspective.
Email your questions to aweckler@independent.ie
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