Phone crashed and wiped - Samsung Galaxy S2 + Jellybean 4.1.2

[Anonymous]

Hi,

My (increasingly decrepit) Samsung S2 crashed suddenly at the weekend and considerately decided to wipe most of my apps, including Play Store. Google tells me that all the apps that have vanished are still installed on my device, which is frankly far from true, let alone helpful. I can't seem to connect to any mobile data now either.

Should I take the risk of doing a hard reset/factory reset to fix the problem? Is this an OS update issue?

I'm so exasperated that I may just bin the phone and go and live in a cave.

[jonsie · Accepted solution]

Is the phone backed up to your google account or to Kies?

If you go into Google Play either on your phone or PC and click on My Apps you should see them all listed.

Have you looked under settings>>application manager to check the apps.

Try a soft reset by holding the on button and home button down until the phone reboots.

Clear the cache :

Turn off the phone and remove the battery. Wait 2 minutes and put it back
Press and hold down Volume Up + Home + Power buttons at the same time.
Release all buttons when you see S2 Logo.
Android system recovery will be loaded now
Select clear cache partition. (Volume buttons to go up or down, select with Home button)
Then select reboot.

If that doesn't fix it then a factory reset using the same method may resolve it for you but you would have to download all apps and settings etc.

[Anonymous]

The phone isn't sounding too healthy at the mo, so you haven't really got anything to lose by following Jonsie's advice! Not sure about living in a cave though; wont that impede your future 4G connectivity?

[Anonymous]

Jonsie,

Thanks so much for the help - really appreciate it! Looks like a factory reset is in order now I've cleared the cache (and learned how to do that!)... but once I've backed up and double backed up all my data.

Thanks again!

[Anonymous]

HAHA! Good point! I suspect the phone may be reaching the end of its lifespan anyway but I want to keep it going for as long as I can, seeing how attached I am to it.

[jonsie]

Good luck, hope all goes well.