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Back to the Basics: 5 Answers to How Often to Restart Your Phone


By: MaryBeth Hamilton

5 Actions to Improve your Mobile Device and Endpoint Security

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Just like restarting your computer is important to maintaining performance, so is restarting your phone. Here is our take on some common questions we receive around:

  • What are the benefits of restarting your phone?
  • How often should you restart your phone?
  • What happens when you don’t restart your phone?
  • What are tips for easily remembering to restart your phone?
  • How do I troubleshoot common problems after a reboot?

Benefits of Regularly Restarting Your Phone

Restarting your phone on a regular basis is an essential part of keeping it running smoothly and helping it remain secure. Restarting can help to clear the memory, fix minor glitches, and keep the phone’s software up to date. It can also be a great way to reduce battery drainage and improve overall performance.

When you restart your phone, it closes any apps that were running in the background and clears out any residual data stored in its memory. This ensures that no unnecessary processes are running or taking up resources that could otherwise be used for other tasks. Plus, it can help install updates and security patches more quickly. This helps protect your phone from potential viruses or malware by making sure everything is up to date with the latest versions of applications installed on it.

Another benefit of restarting is that it helps maintain strong battery life by allowing only necessary apps to run at any given time. It also prevents background processes like syncing emails or downloading images from draining too much power while the phone is not being used actively.

How Often Should You Restart Your Phone?

Once a week is recommended to keep it running smoothly and securely. Of course, if you are experiencing any issues or performance problems (i.e. black screen, frozen screen, or any other random issues), it may be time to reboot.

To make sure that you remember to restart your device regularly, set up notifications or reminders so that it becomes part of your routine – more tips on that in a bit.

What Happens When You Don’t Restart Your Phone?

The main issues typically encountered are slower performance, battery drainage issues and other unexpected problems. Plus, by not regularly restarting your device, you may be missing out on important updates and security patches that require a restart to complete installation. If your company uses a mobile device management (MDM) solution, they likely have this covered for you but always work checking.

Tips for Easily Remembering to Restart Your Phone

Here are the tips we promised:

  1. Set up notifications or reminders on your phone so that it becomes part of your routine.
  2. Put a post-it note or sticker somewhere that you will see every day as a reminder.
  3. Find an app or program that can help remind you when it’s time to restart your phone.
  4. Try setting aside a specific time during the week where you take two minutes to reboot your device. Sunday mornings before you start the week are always good.

Troubleshooting Common Problems After a Reboot of Your Phone

If you have rebooted your phone and are experiencing issues, here are a few things you can try. Note if this is a corporate owned and managed device, be sure to use your managed mobility services partner (like the Dataprise Wireless Watchdogs team!):

  1. Make sure your phone is fully charged before rebooting it.
  2. Look for any updates or patches that might need to be installed after restarting.
  3. Force close any apps or programs that may be causing issues.
  4. Reset your network settings to connect to your Wi-Fi again if needed.
  5. If all else fails, try resetting your device as a last resort – but make sure you back up your data first!). 

The bottom line is, restarting your phone on a regular basis is essential for keeping it in good working order.

How Can Dataprise Help?

Checkout our Mobility Services & related resources:

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