Yesterday, my dad came to me and said — ‘My Android phone (moto e) is not turning ON’. And by taking a closer look, it seems like the phone was stuck in the boot animation. Restart didn’t help. The local repair shops either refuse to fix it or quoted huge sums of money. So, what next? Well, with a little research, I was able to fix this error and here is everything you need to know about bootloop on Android
Note: This was tested on Moto e 1st gen running stock Android 5.0 Lollipop. And although, this may or may not work on each device, it should work on most smartphones or at least it’s still worth a short.
What is bootloop on Android?
Your devices stuck in the starting screen or start restart again and again. There are many reasons why it can happen, usually — if you tinker with your devices a lot, flash different ROM, etc. But sometimes it’s the manufacturer fault like we saw in LG G4.
What options do you have?
#1 The first thing you need to do when your Android phone or tablet is under bootloop is trying to restart it using the power button. If that doesn’t work, remove the battery. And if it has a non-removable battery, then see if you can restart it from the bootloader. Don’t worry if you don’t know how to do that, we’ll come to this in a while.
#2 If the device is under warranty and you did nothing wrong that void your warranty (like rooting or unlocking the bootloader etc.) then go to the manufacturer service center and get it fixed. If the issue can not be fixed, you’ll get a replacement.
#3 If none of the above two work, then try clearing your device’s cache from the custom recovery. This work for most smartphones (mine included.) We’ll see the detail steps for this later in this post.
#4 Finally if nothing works, then you got two options — if the device can be powered ON, then you can connect it to your computer and flash a supported ROM from the terminal. But if the device does not power ON, then chances are it’s hard bricked. The next best thing you can do in this situation is to contact the service provider; sometimes they might able to fix it with RFID tags. But that’s rare, to be honest.
What Will You Need?
If you have Rooted your Android smartphone or tablet, then chances are you also have installed a custom recovery in it. TWRP and CMW are two popular custom recovery.
Or, if you don’t remember installing any custom recovery, then you can use the stock recovery option on your phone. Yes, all devices come with a built-in stock recovery but it’s limited in features.
For this tutorial, I’ll show you the steps for custom recovery, since I had that installed on my dad’s rooted devices. But you’ll be able to find these options under stock recovery as well.
Fix bootloop by clearing cache from custom recovery
Step 1. Turn OFF your phone by holding down the power button for 7-10 sec. Sometimes it’s not possible to turn off the phone when the phone is stuck on bootloop (the same thing happen in my case) And one way to fix that is trying pressing the different combination of keys. Pressing Vol up and power button simultaneously for few seconds worked in my case.
Step 2. Once your phone is turned off, enter into Fastboot mode. Again the steps to open Fastboot mode is different from each handset. For moto e; while the phone is Powered OFF, press and hold Volume Down + Vol Up + Power button for 5-7 seconds simultaneously and then release them. If this doesn’t work for you, Google ‘how to open Fastboot mode in <your device name> ‘.
Step 3. Next, you’ll see a boot menu with some text written on a black screen. Look for the options that say Fastboot and use the volume up and down keys to navigate. There are two possibilities here –
If you have custom recovery installed like TWRP then look for option that says ‘Recovery‘
If you do not have a custom recovery, then use your phone’s default recovery menu.
Use volume down/up buttons to highlight the Recovery option and select it by pressing the Power button once.
Step 4. Now once you are in the recovery mode select “Wipe Data Factory Reset.” This will erase all data in the phone’s internal memory. But, this is the risk worth taking if you have no other way to fix this.
Step 5. And while you are at it, also “Wipe Cache partition” by going back to recovery menu. Next, go to “advanced” and then select “Wipe Dalvik Cache.”
Step 6. And that’s it, now go back to your main menu and Reboot your phone.
Hope this fix your bootloop on Android smartphone or tablet. If not, please mention your exact error in the comment below or email me via the contact form and hopefully, I’ll be able to point you in right direction.
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