How to fix your Samsung Galaxy A7 (2017) that keeps restarting / rebooting on its own [Troubleshooting Guide]

Random reboots are a sign of a serious firmware issue. More often than not they occur after a firmware update but we’ve already encountered cases wherein third-party apps that keep crashing would also result to unexplained restarts. We’ve received quite a lot of complaints from our readers who own the Samsung Galaxy A7 so we feel the need to address this problem.

Samsung Galaxy A7 keeps rebooting restarting

In this post, I will walk  you through in troubleshooting your A7 that keeps restarting or rebooting. We don’t know what the problem is all about so we will take a look at all possibilities and rule them out one by one until we arrive at a point that we can easily pinpoint the reason your phone keeps rebooting. If you’re one of the owners of this phone and are currently bugged by a similar concern, continue reading below as this post may be able to help you.

But before we actually jump to our troubleshooting, if you have other issues with your device, then try to visit our Galaxy A7 troubleshooting page for we have already addressed the most commonly reported issues with this device. Try to find issues that are similar with yours and use the solutions and workarounds we suggested. If they don’t work for you or if you need more help, then feel free to contact us by filling up our Android issues questionnaire. Just give us the information we need and we’ll help you solve your problem.

How to troubleshoot your Galaxy A7 that keeps restarting on its own

Problem: I can no longer use my phone normally because from time to time it shuts down and turns back on without me doing anything. It restarts on its own and I don’t even know the reason why. My phone is a Galaxy A7 and it’s barely still 3 months with me so I feel really frustrated knowing I paid a few hundred dollars for it but now I can’t use it properly due to this problem. Can you help me with this?

Troubleshooting: When this kind of problem happens for the first time, you would think it might just be a temporary problem with the phone. Then when it happens again you would begin feeling annoyed especially when you were doing something important when the phone rebooted. When it occurs more frequent than usual, that’s when frustration sets in and sometimes you may actually panic a little bit especially if the phone is still new.

We’ve actually received quite a lot of reports from our readers about this problem, although we’ve only received a few from the owners of the Galaxy A7. Nevertheless, we feel the need to address this problem for the benefit of our readers who are currently bugged by this issue. With all that being said, here’s what you should do about it:

Step 1: Find out if the phone still reboots on its own when all third-party apps are disabled

Obviously, we’re trying to rule out the possibility that this problem is caused by one or some of the third-party apps you installed on your phone. By running the phone in safe mode, you’re actually disabling all-third-party elements in your phone. If this problem is caused by one of them, then the problem shouldn’t occur in this mode. So, this is how you start your phone up in safe mode:

  1. Turn the device off.
  2. Press and hold the Power key past the screen with the device name.
  3. When ‘SAMSUNG’ appears on the screen, release the Power key.
  4. Immediately after releasing the Power key, press and hold the Volume down key.
  5. Continue to hold the Volume down key until the device finishes restarting.
  6. Safe mode will display in the bottom left corner of the screen.
  7. Release the Volume down key when you see ‘Safe Mode’.

Just booting your phone up in this mode doesn’t fix the problem but it will give you a hint if it’s the third-party apps that’s causing the problem or not. So while in safe mode, observe your phone closely to see if there’s a difference in performance and if the phone still reboots on its own.

Assuming the phone doesn’t reboot on its own in this mode, then it means that one or some of the apps you installed is causing this problem. In this case since we don’t know which app it is, try to find out if there are apps that need to be updated and update them as some of them may already be obsolete:

  1. From any Home screen, tap the Apps icon.
  2. Tap Play Store.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.

If, however, you have some apps in mind that you think are causing the problem, then, you have to reset them one by one by clearing their cache and data and eif that won’t work, you need to uninstall them to see if the phone works perfectly after that.

How to clear app cache and data on Galaxy A7

  1. From any Home screen, tap the Apps icon.
  2. Tap Settings.
  3. Tap Applications.
  4. Tap Application manager.
  5. Tap the desired application in the default list or tap MORE > Show system apps to display pre-installed apps.
  6. Tap Storage.
  7. Tap Clear data and then tap OK.
  8. Tap Clear cache.

How to uninstall applications from your Galaxy A7

  1. From any Home screen, tap the Apps icon.
  2. Tap Settings.
  3. Tap Applications.
  4. Tap Application manager.
  5. Tap the desired application
  6. Tap Uninstall.
  7. Tap Uninstall again to confirm.

You may have to reboot your phone several times to confirm if the problem got fixed and you need to continue your observation to know if the phone still reboots on its own after doing all this.

Step 2: Would it still reboot even when all of the system caches are new?

Assuming the phone still reboots on its own while in safe mode, this is the next thing you should do. This will rule out the possibility that this problem is due to some corrupt system caches. As you know, caches get corrupted without any warning and when it happens and the system continues to use them, performance related issues may occur including random reboots. For this, you need to run your phone in Recovery Mode and then wipe the cache partition:

  1. Turn off the device.
  2. Press and hold the Volume Up key and the Home key, then press and hold the Power key.
  3. When the device logo screen displays, release only the Power key
  4. 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).
  5. Press the Volume down key several times key to highlight ‘wipe cache partition.’
  6. Press the Power key to select.
  7. Press the Volume down key to highlight ‘yes’ and press the Power key to select.
  8. When the wipe cache partition is complete, ‘Reboot system now’ is highlighted.
  9. Press the Power key to restart the device.

Wait for your phone to become active and then continue your observation to see if it still reboots on its own. If so, you have no other choice but to do the next step.

Step 3: Try to see if it would still restart when it’s brought back to its factory settings

After wiping the cache partition and phone still restarts on its own, it’s time to bring it back to its factory default settings. This will tell us if the problem is with the firmware or if the hardware has some issues. But before the reset, make sure you make a backup of your important files and data as they will be deleted during the reset. After the backup, make sure to disable the Factory Reset Protection of your phone so you won’t be locked out.

How to disable the Samsung Galaxy A7 Factory Reset Protection

  1. From the Home screen, tap the Apps icon.
  2. Tap Settings.
  3. Tap Accounts.
  4. Tap Google.
  5. Tap your Google ID email address. If you have multiple accounts setup, you will need to repeat these steps for each account.
  6. Tap More.
  7. Tap Remove account.
  8. Tap REMOVE ACCOUNT.

How to do the master reset on Galaxy A7

  1. Turn off the device.
  2. Press and hold the Volume Up key and the Home key, then press and hold the Power key.
  3. When the device logo screen displays, release only the Power key
  4. 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).
  5. Press the Volume down key several times key to highlight ‘wipe data / factory reset.’
  6. Press Power button to select.
  7. Press the Volume down key until ‘Yes — delete all user data’ is highlighted.
  8. Press Power button to select and start the master reset.
  9. When the master reset is complete, ‘Reboot system now’ is highlighted.
  10. Press the Power key to restart the device.

You can also reset your phone from the Settings menu…

  1. From the Home screen, tap the Apps icon.
  2. Tap Settings.
  3. Tap Backup and reset.
  4. If desired, tap Backup my data to move the slider to ON or OFF.
  5. If desired, tap Restore to move the slider to ON or OFF.
  6. Tap Factory data reset.
  7. Tap Reset device.
  8. If you have screen lock turned on, enter your PIN or password.
  9. Tap Continue.
  10. Tap Delete all.

After the reset, don’t install anything yet but observe your phone to see if it still reboots on its own. If it does, try to charge it and while it’s charging, continue using it to know if it reboots. At this point though, whatever the outcome, you need a technician to do further tests on your phone so you have to bring it to a shop.

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