topic Re: How Often to Reboot Your Phone in Get Support

How Often to Reboot Your Phone

sa7375 — Wed, 05 Jan 2022 09:32:52 GMT

Two distinctly different recommendations on how often to re-boot your phone:

Reader’s Digest recommends every week. “To help preserve memory and prevent crashes, consider restarting your smartphone at least once a week”. More here
Times recommends every year. “So once a year, not once a week, power your phone off all the way. And don’t let anyone else — not even your IT guy — tell you otherwise.”. More here

Any thoughts

Re: How Often to Reboot Your Phone

bishamon — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 16:49:37 GMT

@sa7375 wrote:
Two distinctly different recommendations on how often to re-boot your phone:

Reader’s Digest recommends every week. “To help preserve memory and prevent crashes, consider restarting your smartphone at least once a week”. More here
Times recommends every year. “So once a year, not once a week, power your phone off all the way. And don’t let anyone else — not even your IT guy — tell you otherwise.”. More here
Any thoughts

Hi,

I would say that you should fully restart your phone close to every week. This helps clear any applications you have running in the background and possibly any runaway processes that may still be running.

Re: How Often to Reboot Your Phone

mh1983 — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 16:56:49 GMT

My thought is it depends on the phone! Android devices, I would have to reboot often to clear out cache/free up memory. BlackBerry 10 devices, not so much, but from time to time. Not sure about iPhones.

As with most things, you'll get contending opinions. I would suggest to reboot if you suspect something's acting up on your phone or it's slowing down -- a reboot can definitely rule out a lot of things and often clear up the issue. But I can safely say I've never done a "planned" reboot of a phone -- just as-needed. That's my take.

Re: How Often to Reboot Your Phone

TheOldVR — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 17:10:44 GMT

I think the advice is good... here's how I handle the same...

Android phones.... I have an app that closes all open apps and clears memory every night, I think @ 3am. I do this as others are using these phones and I need the phones to take care of themselves. No issues so far and it seems to work well.

Iphones... I manually close apps on a regular basis but never reboot. IOS seems to be fine with running forever.....

Just my 2 cents 😉

Re: How Often to Reboot Your Phone

hycm53 — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 17:23:39 GMT

@TheOldVR wrote:

I think the advice is good... here's how I handle the same...

Android phones.... I have an app that closes all open apps and clears memory every night, I think @ 3am. I do this as others are using these phones and I need the phones to take care of themselves. No issues so far and it seems to work well.

Iphones... I manually close apps on a regular basis but never reboot. IOS seems to be fine with running forever.....

Just my 2 cents 😉

What app that closes all open apps and clears memory every night?

Re: How Often to Reboot Your Phone

mh1983 — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 17:26:34 GMT

I'd be weary of apps that close everything and clear memory as they can drain the battery and actually have an adverse effect on Android memory management.

Re: How Often to Reboot Your Phone

TheOldVR — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 17:34:33 GMT

@hycm53... yup, actually right now it's an option on the Launcher for Seniors that I have on my Mom and Dad's Phones'. It works well... and I don't see any issues that they are having...

@mh1983no issues here dude, it just works.

This is the one I have setup for them.... https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.senior_safety_phone&hl=en

Clearing the open apps was an option Huawei had in one of their apps as a system clean-out.... it also didn't cause any issues.

Re: How Often to Reboot Your Phone

mh1983 — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 17:35:34 GMT

@mh1983no issues here dude, it just works.

Great! So long as it's working for you. Just wanted to throw caution to the wind. Also, though I am in fact a male, please don't assume. 🙂

Re: How Often to Reboot Your Phone

TheOldVR — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 17:39:37 GMT

@mh1983 wrote:
@mh1983no issues here dude, it just works.
Great! So long as it's working for you. Just wanted to throw caution to the wind. Also, though I am in fact a male, please don't assume. 🙂

LOL - isn't "dude" gender neutral now? It is for me at least....

Apologies,..... updated text below 😛

@mh1983no issues here dude or dudette, it just works.

Re: How Often to Reboot Your Phone

hycm53 — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 17:56:15 GMT

@TheOldVR wrote:

@hycm53... yup, actually right now it's an option on the Launcher for Seniors that I have on my Mom and Dad's Phones'. It works well... and I don't see any issues that they are having...

@mh1983no issues here dude, it just works.

This is the one I have setup for them.... https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.senior_safety_phone&hl=en

Clearing the open apps was an option Huawei had in one of their apps as a system clean-out.... it also didn't cause any issues.

Thanks!

Re: How Often to Reboot Your Phone

srlawren — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 20:52:50 GMT

@mh1983 wrote:
I'd be weary of apps that close everything and clear memory as they can drain the battery and actually have an adverse effect on Android memory management.

@mh1983 agreed. For the majority of apps, you actually use up more battery opening and closing the app repeatedly than to just leave it running in the background.

I'm in the "about once a week" club, as I think preventative restarting is better than waiting for issues to come up and then restarting. If you look around the community you're going to find a lot of cases where a simple reboot resolved an unexpected sudden change in phone behaviour. It's just good preventative maintenance, IMHO, but take that for what it's worth.

Having said that, I'm presently sitting at uptime of 327 hours, or about 13 and a half days. I guess I'm overdue! BRB, gotta reboot. 😉

EDIT: Discussions isn't really the right place for this topic. You should probably have put it in Phones & Hardware, @sa7375

Re: How Often to Reboot Your Phone

sa7375 — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 22:38:25 GMT

Point taken regarding the group. Indeed Phone & Hardware would have been better.

@srlawren

Re: How Often to Reboot Your Phone

LovesToPM — Wed, 24 Apr 2019 02:47:04 GMT

@sa7375 Thanks for the interesting read.

There's no need to reboot every week but waiting a full year to reboot is a heck of a long time.

If you want your phone running well, it's also good to check your phone's storage and memory. Make sure it isn't being overloaded. Just my 2 cents.

Re: How Often to Reboot Your Phone

computergeek541 — Wed, 24 Apr 2019 03:11:42 GMT

thread moved to Phones & Hardware

Re: How Often to Reboot Your Phone

sa7375 — Wed, 24 Apr 2019 13:38:01 GMT

Thanks & appreciated.

Would the ability to move a thread to another group be available to an average user too: if so, I'll apreciate instructions on how.

@computergeek541

Re: How Often to Reboot Your Phone

computergeek541 — Wed, 24 Apr 2019 19:23:19 GMT

@sa7375 wrote:
Thanks & appreciated.
Would the ability to move a thread to another group be available to an average user too: if so, I'll apreciate instructions on how.
@computergeek541

What you could do would be to tag a couple of the Oracles and ask that it be done for you.

Re: How Often to Reboot Your Phone

Barryere — Fri, 26 Apr 2019 21:19:24 GMT

I hardly ever turn my phone off. Your phone no matter what hardware its got will slow down over time. It's just the nature of hardware... not to mention any updates to software to deliberately cause lag.

Re: How Often to Reboot Your Phone

TheGx — Wed, 01 May 2019 13:54:32 GMT

I've used all kinds of phones, and Apple phones seem to need less maintanance such as rebooting etc, for example there's an app called ccleaner I use on desktop/laptop that I also got on androids - but that app isn't available for Iphones, maybe because Iphones don't really need it.

The Androids I've used always needed reboots often, like every week or more, but the iphones seem be able to run forever - as @TheOldVR said.

Re: How Often to Reboot Your Phone

stonechucker — Wed, 01 May 2019 14:19:34 GMT

When apps stop working correctly, or I have an issue with my device not functioning properly, I will do a restart or reboot.

Cellular phones are no different than desktop PCs, laptops, or servers. Sometimes, you just need to turn it off and back on.

Re: How Often to Reboot Your Phone

srlawren — Wed, 01 May 2019 16:18:25 GMT

@stonechucker wrote:
When apps stop working correctly, or I have an issue with my device not functioning properly, I will do a restart or reboot.

@stonechucker while I respect this approach, I don't agree with it. Would you wait until your car threw a rod through the engine wall before replacing the oil? No, you do your regularly scheduled maintenance every X,000 km to prevent that from happening.

Granted, this is a horrrrrrible analogy since the oil example leads to a very costly engine replacement bill whereas the phone situation can be resolved in 60 seconds with a reboot. But I still see this as a preventative thing to do. It literally takes about 60 seconds on most modern devices--maybe 120 tops if you have a particularly slow one.

Maybe you won't get a mutl-thousand $ repair bill from not doing it, but what if it starts acting up in an importand phone call, or it prevents you from getting a call from a friend in need or a prospective employer with a job offer, or a client wanting to place a nice juicy order? Or you're not receiving urgent IMs from a friend or family member that needs help because that process is hung? These should be rare situations, granted, but the effort required to simply reboot about once a week to avoid the vast majority of them seems totally justified, IMHO.