Whenever you notice a software related issue (like battery life or performance), then troubleshoot this by booting into the HTC 10 Safe Mode.
The software in our smartphones today are incredibly complex and are made up of a ton of interworking components. Google has given 3rd-party applications from the Play Store a lot of control, and this can sometimes make our phones behave a way it’s not supposed to, that it didn’t used to.
Thankfully, there are some ways to troubleshoot these issues, and I’m going to go over one of those today.
Safe Mode on the HTC 10 is something that is built into almost all Android devices. Some OEMs, like Xiaomi, have chosen to remove this feature from their MIUI software. Most choose to keep it in though, and I am proud that HTC has done that. When you are in the HTC 10 Safe Mode, all 3rd-party applications are disabled so they cannot interfere with the core Android OS.
This is idea for our troubleshooting steps because we want to eliminate all possibilities so we can zero in on what the issue really is. So let me show you how to do that right now.
HTC 10 Safe Mode
- Press and hold the Power button for a few seconds
- When the Power Menu appears, let go of the Power button
- Then tap and hold on the Power Off option
- When the dialog box appears, tap on the OK button
- You will then see the HTC 10 reboot into Safe Mode
Explanation
So to give you a couple of examples of how Safe Mode on the HTC 10 can be useful. Say you were having performance issues even while you were just scrolling around in the Settings menu or the App Drawer. This is definitely not normal and it shouldn’t happen. If you have any 3rd-party applications installed from the Play Store, one of them could be hogging the CPU while it does something in the background.
The same thing can be said about battery life issues. If you have an application that is constantly running the CPU at full speed in the background, it will cause a ton of battery drain when it shouldn’t. So to test this theory, you’ll want to boot into the HTC 10 Safe Mode to see if the issue continues. You’ll do this by pressing and holding on the Power button for a few seconds until the Power Menu appears on the screen.
You’ll then want to tap and hold on the Power Off option that appears at the top of the Power Menu for the HTC 10. After holding this option down for a few seconds, you’ll then see the dialog box appear (just like you see in the image above). This gives you a brief explanation of what Safe Mode is and if you press the OK button then you’ll see the HTC 10 shut down and start to reboot.
The device will boot up through what seems like the typical boot sequence, but you’ll notice a watermark at the bottom left once you get back into the Android OS. Once you are back into Android, you’ll also see that all of your 3rd-party apps a no longer being displayed. On some devices, we would see these apps as simply grayed out, but HTC has decided to hide them altogether.
Once you are done with you’re tests on the HTC 10, go ahead and reboot the device like you normally would. This time, it will not boot into Safe Mode (since you didn’t tell it to), and you’ll have your 3rd-party apps back right where you left them.
