When your phone powers on, shows the logo and other information during boot up but can’t reach the home screen before it powers off and on again, then that’s what you call the “boot loop.” The device will continue doing the same cycle until the battery runs out. The problem may remain even after charging your phone so you really have to do something about it.
In this post, I will tackle this problem with the Samsung Galaxy A5 being the subject of our troubleshooting. We have received several complaints from our readers regarding this problem as we will address it for the sake of our readers who reached out to us seeking for help. We will consider every possibility and rule out each of them until we will know what the issue is all about and what we need to do to fix it. So, if you’re one of the owners of this phone and are currently bugged by a similar problem, continue reading below as this post may be able to help you.
But before we go to our proper troubleshooting, if you happen to find this page because you were looking for solutions to a different problem, then I suggest you visit our Galaxy A5 troubleshooting page as we’ve already addressed the most commonly reported issues with this phone and you may find what you’re looking for in there. Feel free to use the solutions and workarounds we provided. If they don’t work for you or if you need further assistance, fill up our Android issues questionnaire and then hit submit and we’ll do our best to help you.
How to troubleshoot your Galaxy A5 that’s stuck in bootloop
Problem: Hello guys. I have a problem with my Galaxy A5. For some unknown reason, the phone no longer turns on successfully like before. It does power on and show the usual logo and all that but just when it’s about to show the home screen, it would turn off only to do the same things over and over. I can no longer use it that’s why I badly need your help. Thanks.
Troubleshooting: Our troubleshooting will be centered on how to make your Galaxy A5 boot successfully again because obviously there’s only so much we can do about a device that won’t boot up to the home screen. This could be just a minor issue with the firmware but there are some things we need to do.
Step 1: Do the Forced Reboot procedure
Being stuck in bootloop isn’t actually due to a system crash but there were cases we’ve encountered before wherein the forced reboot procedure fixed similar issues. It’s just like pulling the battery out of the phone to refresh its memory by the A5 doesn’t have a removable battery so you have to do the procedure to simulate battery disconnect. Don’t worry, it’s safe for your phone as well as for your files and data. All you gotta do is press and hold the Volume Down and Power keys together for 10 seconds and your phone may successfully boot up.
However, if your phone still gets stuck in boot loop after this, then you have to move on to the next step.
Step 2: Try to start your phone up in Safe Mode
Since the forced reboot procedure didn’t fix the issue, we will now try to see if one or some of the third-party apps has something to do with it. We don’t have to uninstall an app just yet since we’re not sure what the cause is but we will try to disable all third-party apps at once to see if the phone can successfully boot up. Follow these steps to try to boot your phone up in Safe mode:
- Turn the device off.
- Press and hold the Power key past the screen with the device name.
- When ‘SAMSUNG’ appears on the screen, release the Power key.
- Immediately after releasing the Power key, press and hold the Volume down key.
- Continue to hold the Volume down key until the device finishes restarting.
- Safe mode will display in the bottom left corner of the screen.
- Release the Volume down key when you see ‘Safe Mode’.
If your phone successfully booted up in this mode, then it’s clear that one or some of the apps you installed is causing the problem. In this case, proceed to step 3, otherwise skip to step 4.
Step 3: Find the apps that cause the problem
It is always not easy to find the culprit especially if you already installed a lot of apps on your phone. However, based on our experience, performance issues that are caused by third-party apps are often due to incompatibility. Your phone’s firmware may have recently been updated and some of the apps you installed may need to be updated as well so they can work smoothly with the new firmware. So, the first thing you need to do about this is to try to update those that need to be updated:
- From any Home screen, tap the Apps icon.
- Tap Play Store.
- Tap the Menu key and then tap My Apps. To keep your apps automatically updated, tap the Menu key, tap Settings, and then tap Auto-update apps to select the check box.
- Choose one of the following options:
- Tap Update [xx] to update all applications with updates available.
- Tap an individual application and then tap Update to update a single application.
On the other hand, if you are already suspecting some apps, then you must try clearing their caches and data first and if that won’t work, you should try uninstalling them one by one…
How to clear app cache and data on Galaxy A5
Clearing cache or data from an app can fix some software problems. If you clear data, any data stored in that app is lost, such as settings, login information, and saved games. If you don’t want to clear the data, try just clearing cache first. If you still experience problems, then clear data too.
- From any Home screen, tap the Apps icon.
- Tap Settings.
- Tap Applications.
- Tap the desired application in the default list or tap Menu icon > Show system apps to display pre-installed apps.
- Tap Storage.
- Tap Clear cache.
- Tap Clear data and then tap OK.
How to uninstall applications from your Galaxy A5
- From any Home screen, tap the Apps icon.
- Tap Settings.
- Tap Applications.
- Tap the desired application in the default list or tap Menu icon > Show system apps to display pre-installed apps.
- Tap Uninstall.
- Tap Uninstall again to confirm.
If the phone still gets stuck in boot loop after all these procedures or if it couldn’t boot up in safe mode successfully, then move on to the next step.
Step 4: Start your phone up in Recovery Mode and wipe cache partition
Even if the phone has a serious problem in its firmware, it should still be able to boot up in Recovery Mode successfully, after all, it’s Android’s fail-safe. So, if all other troubleshooting procedures failed, this must be the next thing you should do. We just need to find out if the phone can successfully bring itself to start in recovery mode because if not, then there’s not much you can do about it but bring it to the shop and let the tech handle the problem for you.
If successful, however, then you can try wiping the cache partition which will delete all system caches. The firmware will then replace them when the phone boots up. Here’s how you do it:
- Turn off the device.
- Press and hold the Volume Up key and the Home key, then press and hold the Power key.
- When the device logo screen displays, release only the Power key.
- When the Android logo displays, release all keys (‘Installing system update’ will show for about 30 – 60 seconds before showing the Android system recovery menu options).
- Press the Volume down key several times key to highlight ‘wipe cache partition’.
- Press the Power key to select.
- Press the Volume down key to highlight ‘yes’ and press the Power key to select.
- When the wipe cache partition is complete, ‘Reboot system now’ is highlighted.
- Press the Power key to restart the device.
Your phone will take a little more time booting up since it will rebuild the caches that were deleted so wait for it. If, however, it’s still stuck in boot loop after this, then you have no other option but to do the reset.
Step 5: Perform the Master Reset on your phone
Assuming your phone could successfully boot up in Recovery mode but wiping the cache partition didn’t fix the problem, then you should try resetting it. But remember, you would lose everything that’s stored in your phone’s internal storage including your files, apps, contacts, messages, etc. when you do this, so it’s up to you if you go with it or not. But for me, you don’t have much of a choice now because even if you let the tech handle it for you, the first thing he would do would be to reset it. If you want to go with it, here’s how…
- Turn off the device.
- Press and hold the Volume Up key and the Home key, then press and hold the Power key.
- When the device logo screen displays, release only the Power key
- When the Android logo displays, release all keys (‘Installing system update’ will show for about 30 – 60 seconds before showing the Android system recovery menu options).
- Press the Volume down key several times key to highlight ‘wipe data / factory reset.’
- Press Power button to select.
- Press the Volume down key until ‘Yes — delete all user data’ is highlighted.
- Press Power button to select and start the master reset.
- When the master reset is complete, ‘Reboot system now’ is highlighted.
- Press the Power key to restart the device.
I hope that this troubleshooting guide can help you.
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