Six ways to get your webOS phone working again 12
by Derek Kessler
Sun, 25 Jul 2010 10:09 am EDT
Sun, 25 Jul 2010 10:09 am EDT 
Is your phone all seized up? Again? Palm’s got some tips to get things back into working order, and it’s the stuff of legends. Well, it’s more the stuff that tech support would tell you to try first, so you can get this out of the way before placing that always-frustrating call. Here’s what Palm suggests, with our own commentary interspersed. The 6Ts:
- Throw all open applications off the top of the screen - this will dump your running programs and help clear your RAM of hogs.
- Turn your phone completely off and on - reset your network connection by doing this and help clear up any snafus.
- Triple-toggle restart - toggle the ringer switch back-and-forth three times while holding down the power switch to force a restart.
- Top off the battery - just let it juice up.
- Take out the battery - the ultimate forceable restart: pull the plug.
- Tether your phone to your computer and reinstall webOS - as a last resort, reinstall the OS and start over. The nuclear option, if you will.
Of course, those aren’t the only options, but they’re the Palm-supported ones. For more sub-nuclear options, be sure to check out our own How To: Restore a seriously ill Pre guide.
Source: Palm Support, thanks to HardBeatZ for the heads up.
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12 Comments
Great! Good to know!
More helpfulness from HardBeatZ. Wish we had an update to talk about! *Sigh*
I've been using Preset Reset (in the Homebrew Apps) to reboot my Pre every day at 3AM. My wife was having issues with her Pixi, so I loaded Preset Reset on her phone to do the same thing. It solved all of her "problems," and I seldom have any issues at all with mine. Just like any computer, rebooting is a good thing. Rebooting every day can't hurt!
Same here. Really does help.
I also second that! I use Reboot Scheduler and it cleared my phones problems. Looks like Preset Reset has a few more options. Well none the less people, get these apps or at least reset your phone daily.
or give us better hardware so we can dump the pre minus for something better (sorry pre plus doesn't cut it)...
I've found the battery pull was necessary to fix things on a few occasions. AFAIK this is the only way to do a true hardware reset, and sometimes that's the only way to clear up problems with some of the auxiliary processors (network, bluetooth, audio, etc).
Why do we need a post on how to get the phone working better? The intent is great, but it shows just how lousy webOS is. If webOS were really a first-class OS we would not need posts like these.
I don't think that's necessarily true. I've heard of similar problems with other smartphone OSs, so they may be equally "lousy".
All OSes have issues and they all provide some sort of "getting back to normal" tips and tricks. This holds true for even the most stable of them (though the list may be a bit shorter and the problems requiring the list may hardly ever occur). Even my Mac and Ubuntu machines have the occasional "hiccup".
On a related note, today I couldn't get data to come across. The 3G icon was there but grayed out, and I had full bars of signal in a city so I couldn't figure out why the data wouldn't kick in. My husband's pre had the same thing going on, so I thought it must be a Verizon issue. Then I tried turning the data connection off and back on and it came on fine. This is the 1st time that's happened so I wondered if anyone else has experienced it?
Wow, I'm an original Pre owner and only just now learned about the triple toggle restart through HP's training. Could have come in handy on several occasions.