How to fix your Samsung Galaxy J3 that keeps freezing [Troubleshooting Guide]

Freezing issues are among the most commonly reported problems especially from users who own entry-level devices like the Samsung Galaxy J3. Your phone accumulates files over time and when the storage is almost running out, it may start to slow down a bit that it’s hard for you to notice it. It’s performance will continue to deteriorate, until such time that it starts freezing.

Samsung Galaxy J3 keeps freezing

Freezing is different from lagging as the latter will only “disable” your phone for a second or two while the former often takes longer before you can regain control. Both of these issues have similarities and they might be caused by the same problem. They are simply signs or results of what the real problem is that’s why we need to dig a little deeper to know what the real issue issue is.

So, in this post, I will walk you through in troubleshooting your Samsung Galaxy J3 that keeps on freezing. We will have to consider the possibilities and rule out each one of them until we can pinpoint the problem and do something about it. If you are one of the owners of this phone and are currently experiencing this problem, then continue reading below as this post may be able to helps you.

Before we jump right into our troubleshooting, if you have other issues, drop by our Galaxy J3 troubleshooting page for we have already addressed many issues with this phone since we started supporting it. Try to find problems that are similar with yours and use the troubleshooting procedures or solutions we suggested. Should you need further assistance from us, fill up our Android issues questionnaire and hit submit. Don’t worry, it’s free.

Step-by-step guide to troubleshooting Galaxy J3 that keeps freezing

We have to troubleshoot your phone to know what the problem is why it keeps on freezing. Knowing what the cause is will help us find a way to fix the problem and that’s the purpose of this guide. But before we actually jump to the steps, here’s one of the messages we received from one of our readers. It best describes this problem…

Problem: I need your help. I have a Galaxy J3 phone and it just started to keep freezing. Most of the times it will take several seconds before I can regain control and there are times it takes a minute or two that I cannot use it. I don’t know what happened to it but it just started out today. Yesterday it was doing fine, no problems at all but today this problem just started and I really don’t have a clue why it’s doing this. Please help.

Troubleshooting: While we want to help our readers fix their problems, we don’t resort to procedures that can potentially cause even more damage. But even so, thing might still happen while you’re troubleshooting so please proceed at your own risk…

Step 1: Make sure there’s sufficient storage space left in your phone

When a phone is running out of storage space, the most common symptom is freezing or lagging. It’s because every service that runs either in the front-end or backend creates temporary files so they can run smoothly. If there’s not enough storage space left, the system may not be able to load necessary services or have to force close already running apps and service to give way others. This will result to performance issues. Therefore, the first thing you should to is find out if there’s enough storage space left in your phone, here’s how you view free storage space on your Galaxy J3:

  1. From any Home screen, tap the Apps icon.
  2. Tap Settings.
  3. Tap Device maintenance.
  4. Tap Storage.
  5. Under ‘Device memory,’ view the Available space value.
  6. From any Home screen, tap the Apps icon.
  7. Tap Settings.
  8. Tap Storage.
  9. View the Available space value.

If your phone almost runs out of space, then try to delete some files and move some to your SD card or computer. After this, you will notice your phone’s performance will return to normal.

Step 2: Reboot your phone in safe mode

Rebooting in safe mode doesn’t fix the problem but it sure will give you an idea to know if the problem is caused by a third-party app or not. When in this mode, all third-party apps will be temporarily disabled so if the issue is caused by one or some of the third-party apps, your device should work normally while it’s in this state. In which case, you should continue to step 3 to manage your applications but if the problem still occurs in safe mode, then skip to step 4.

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’.

Step 3: Find, reset and uninstall apps that cause the problem

Assuming the phone works perfectly while in safe mode, it confirms our suspicion that the problem is caused by one or some of the third-party apps. These applications are the ones you downloaded from the Play Store or manually installed or sideloaded. The next thing you should do is find the app that’s causing the problem and then try to reset it by clearing its cache and data and if that won’t work, uninstall it.

How to clear app cache and data on Galaxy J3

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

How to uninstall an app from your Galaxy J3

  1. From any Home screen, tap the Apps icon.
  2. Tap Settings.
  3. Tap Applications.
  4. Tap the desired application in the default list or tap Menu icon > Show system apps to display pre-installed apps.
  5. Tap Uninstall.
  6. Tap Uninstall again to confirm.

You may have to uninstall more than one app to fix the problem.

Step 4: Reboot your phone in Recovery mode and wipe cache partition

If the phone still keeps freezing while in safe mode, then we can say that the problem is with the firmware but saying so doesn’t make things easier because we have to consider every possibility in this situation as well. It could be that some of the caches got corrupted for some reason but the phone is still using them that’s why this problem happens. Therefore, we have to rule this possibility out by wiping the cache partition, here’s how…

  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.

After wiping the cache partition and the phone still freezing frequently, then you have to reset it.

Step 5: It’s time to reset your Galaxy J3

A reset is necessary at this point in our troubleshooting. As you can see, all other procedures failed to fix the problem that’s why it’s time to bring the phone back to its original settings. But before that, make sure you back up all your important files and data as they will also be deleted and can no longer be restored after that. Then, make sure you disable the Factory Reset Protection (FRP) to avoid being locked out of your device after the reset.

How to disable FRP on Galaxy J3

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

How to Master Reset your Galaxy J3

  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 any Home screen, tap the Apps icon.
  2. Tap Settings.
  3. Tap Cloud and accounts.
  4. Tap Backup and restore.
  5. If desired, tap Back up my data to move the slider to ON or OFF.
  6. If desired, tap Restore to move the slider to ON or OFF.
  7. Tap the back key twice to return to the Settings menu, then tap General Management.
  8. Tap Reset.
  9. Tap Factory data reset.
  10. Tap Reset device.
  11. If you have screen lock turned on, enter your PIN or password.
  12. Tap Continue.
  13. Tap Delete all.

I hope this troubleshooting guide can help you.

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