What to do when your HTC U11 won’t turn on [Troubleshooting Guide]

The HTC U11 was in June but we’ve already received quite a lot of issues from our readers that’s why we find it necessary to publish support articles that will help users fix common issues and problem. Among the messages we received are reports that there U11 units that won’t turn on anymore after they turned off on their own. Apparently, we really can’t tell what the problem with the phone is except for the fact that it doesn’t respond so we need to do something about it.

In this post, I will walk you through in troubleshooting your HTC U11 that won’t turn on anymore. We will try to look into every possibility and rule them out one by one until we can pinpoint the problem. This way, we can also try to formulate a solution that might fix the problem and prevent it from happening again in the future. So, if you own this great new phone from HTC, then continue reading below as this post may help you.

But before we go to our troubleshooting, if you happen to be looking for a solution to a different problem, then I suggest you visit our HTC U11 troubleshooting page for we may have already addressed concerns that are similar with yours. Feel free to use our solutions and workarounds. If they don’t work and you need further assistance, you can always contact us by completing our Android issues questionnaire and hitting submit.

How to troubleshoot your HTC U11 that won’t turn on

The course of our troubleshooting would be to determine if this problem has something to do with phone’s firmware or hardware. There’s nothing much we can do about a phone that won’t turn on so our troubleshooting will be centered on how to make the phone power up even in normal or other modes. That being said, here’s what I suggest you do about your HTC U11 that won’t turn on…

Step 1: Try doing the Forced Restart procedure

System crashes happen all the time and when it happens to your HTC U11, the result could be an unresponsive phone. The thing is, system crashes leave an impression that your phone is powered down and won’t turn on anymore, which makes it a bit more complicated than when the phone is simply not responding.

A crash can always be corrected by pulling the battery out that’s why we have “battery pull” procedure before but since your HTC U11 doesn’t have a removable battery (and doing so may void the warranty), you can do a combo to simulate battery disconnect which basically has the same effect as the battery pull procedure.

Press and hold the Power and the Volume Down buttons for 12 to 15 seconds. The phone may vibrate and restart when you do this and that’s the sign that your device successfully restarted. This might be the only thing you have to do to bring your U11 back to life. However, if it doesn’t respond to this, then move on to the next step.

Step 2: Charge your phone and try doing the Forced Restart procedure again

It’s possible that your phone’s firmware crashed when the battery was about to be drained completely so by the time you did the forced restart procedure, it didn’t respond at all due to lack of battery to power up its hardware.

Try charging your phone for at least ten minutes to make sure there’s enough battery and if it still doesn’t turn on when you hit the Power key, do what you did in the first step while it’s plugged in. It may turn on this time.

Well, the thing about charging is that it immediately tells you if your phone has a possible hardware problem or not because it will show the charging signs like the battery symbol with a bolt in the middle or lights up an LED at the top of the display. If none of these signs show after a few minutes of charging, it’s always possible the phone is suffering from a hardware issue. But try doing the next steps to see if you can still bring the phone back to life.

Step 3: Try starting the phone in Safe mode

It’s possible that the problem is caused by one or some of the apps you installed on your phone. We have encountered similar issues before wherein some apps kept crashing and resulted to a phone that won’t turn on anymore. We can still consider it as a system crash but more often, the phone will be able to start if those apps aren’t loaded during boot up. This requires you to start your phone in safe mode, although it’s a bit of a long shot in this case, just try doing it to rule out this possibility.

How to run HTC U11 in Safe Mode using the hardware keys

1. Turn the HTC U11 off (it might already be turned off).
2. Press the Power button to turn it on.
3. When the HTC logo displays on the screen, let go of the Power key and immediately press and hold the Volume Down button.
4. Let go of the button when you see Safe mode at the lower left portion of the screen.

If the phone failed to turn on in this step, then move on to the next step.

Step 4: Try booting your phone up in Recovery Mode

The Android system recovery or known to us as Recovery Mode is a fail-safe environment wherein it allows you to do something that could greatly impact the firmware and overall performance of the phone. If this problem is due to an issue with the firmware, it should still be able to boot up in this mode so it’s very important you tried this before bringing the phone to the tech. If you can successfully bring your phone up in this mode, then you can do a couple of things that might just fix the issue. After all, when the phone starts up in this mode, it’s clear enough the hardware is fine and the problem might be with the firmware.

The first thing you should do when the phone starts in this mode is to wipe the cache partition, if that fails, then you should do the master reset.

How to start HTC U11 in Recovery Mode and wipe cache partition

1. Your HTC U11 should be turned off before you can proceed, which might already be the case with your device.
2. Get your phone into the Download Mode by pressing and holding the Volume Down and Power keys together. If you can see red, blue and yellow text on a black background after doing this, then it means you have successfully entered the download mode.
3. Now, using the Volume Down key, highlight the option “reboot to bootloader” and then press the Power key to select it.
4. Using the Volume Down key again, highlight the option “reboot to recovery” and press the Power key to choose it.
5. When you’re prompted with the triangle and exclamation mark, press and hold the Power key and press the Volume Up button until you see another screen with yellow, blue and white texts.
6. Use the Volume Down key to highlight the option “wipe cache partition” and to select it, press the Power key.
7. It may take a few seconds for the HTC U11 to delete all the system caches and when it’s done, you will another options. This time, highlight “Reboot system now” and press the Power key to confirm.

It may take a little while for the phone to boot up successfully as it rebuilds the caches. If it boots up, then this might be the end of the problem. After all, all we want is to bring the phone back to life and I believe we’ve already done that. But even if the phone failed to boot up successfully, you can still do almost the same thing but this time it will reset it.

How to start HTC U11 in Recovery Mode and do the Master Reset

1. Your HTC U11 should be turned off before you can proceed, which might already be the case with your device.
2. Get your phone into the Download Mode by pressing and holding the Volume Down and Power keys together. If you can see red, blue and yellow text on a black background after doing this, then it means you have successfully entered the download mode.
3. Now, using the Volume Down key, highlight the option “reboot to bootloader” and then press the Power key to select it.
4. Using the Volume Down key again, highlight the option “reboot to recovery” and press the Power key to choose it.
5. When you’re prompted with the triangle and exclamation mark, press and hold the Power key and press the Volume Up button until you see another screen with yellow, blue and white texts.
6. Use the Volume Down key to highlight the option “wipe data/factory reset” and to select it, press the Power key.
7. It may take a few seconds for the HTC U11 to delete all the system caches and when it’s done, you will another options. This time, highlight “Reboot system now” and press the Power key to confirm.

If the problem still persists after this or if you can’t make the phone to boot up in Recovery mode, then it’s time to bring it to a shop and let the tech handle the problem for you.

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