This article will reveal some of the simple troubleshooting steps you can do before you send your device to the repair centre. Depending on the fault, it may not always be your device. Other culprits could be your charger, battery, sim card, memory and even your network operator.

1. Phone cannot power on

Before you bring the phone to the repair centre, please check these two items. Your battery and your charger. Plug in your charger to your device and check the display to see whether charging has started. Signs of charging include a beep when the charger is connected and/or a scrolling battery bar. This will confirm that charging is ok. Are you sure?

Charging is only ok when your battery is fully charged. How do you know if your battery is fully charged?

After the phone prompts Battery Fully Charged or something along that line, unplug the charger and see if the battery icon is full i.e. 100%. If it drops to 50% (half the battery icon), then bring the device with the battery and charger to the repair centre.

2. Phone cannot connect to the network i.e. no signal

What this means is that there is no reception signal. You can tell that by looking at the antenna icon on the display. If your device is connected to the network, you will usually see one or more signal bars on top of the antenna icon. First thing you do is to move to an open space or near your window if you are at home. Then check if there is reception. If yes, there is no problem at all.

If you have this problem of no signal, do this so that you know if it's the problem with the device or the sim card. Borrow your friend's phone and insert your sim card into it. Power it on and see if the network connection is ok. If it's ok, the problem is your device. Bring your device for repair. If the same issue remains, the culprit is your sim card. Don't go to your repair centre, go instead to the network operator.

3. Phone keeps resetting by itself.

Power off your device and remove the memory card and sim card. Put back the battery and power it on again without the memory card and sim card. If the device is ok, try powering it on with the sim card but without the memory card. If the restart problem comes back, go to your network operator.

Else, restart the phone with both the memory card and sim card and check if the problem occurs. If yes, get a new memory card.

Of course you can bring everything (sim card, device, memory card, charger, battery) to the repair centre without going through the abovementioned steps. For me, time is precious and I wouldn't mind learning some troubleshooting myself.

Do not forget that it is also possible that there is completely nothing wrong with your device or it's accessories and the fault lies with the network operator. One such incident could be there is no signal reception for a particular network operator because their network is down.