After Soft Reset, the most useful forms of troubleshooting on LG K40 are Safe Mode, Recovery Mode & the Download Mode. Soft Reset is nothing but a normal restart. It’s a quick fix and works most of the time.
However, for bigger issues as soft brick, overheating, app crash or being locked out due to a forgotten pattern or pin, we need to use the advanced modes of troubleshooting which are safe mode, recovery mode & the download mode.
Let’s deal with them one by one.
1. LG K40 Recovery Mode
The recovery mode is useful when you’re locked out due to a forgotten pin, pattern or password. You should use recovery mode to Hard Reset your K40 only in case you’re unable to reset the phone using the “Settings” app.
Within the Phone Settings, we can do a Factory Data Reset by going to “Settings” < “Restart & Reset (General Tab)” < “Factory data reset”.
If locked out, then follow the below procedure to boot your K40 into Recovery Mode –
- Power Off your LG K40.
- Press the Volume Down & Power Button simultaneously.
- While turning on, as soon as the phone vibrates, leave the power button and hold it again. Keep holding until you’re on the “Factory Data Reset” screen.
- In the whole procedure don’t release the volume down button.
We are now in the Recovery Mode.
In the recovery mode, we can move up and down using the volume rocker and select or confirm our action using the power button.
Touch doesn’t work in recovery mode.
To reset your K40 using recovery mode –
Move down from “No (Exit)” to “Yes” using the volume down button. Press the power button to select.
Once Again Move down to “Yes” using volume down and confirm the action using the Power button.
Now, the phone would reset but as a security measure, you would be asked to sign in using the last synced google account on this device.
If you’re unable to bypass the Google verification screen, you can check out this post to Bypass Google Account / FRP on LG K40.
2. LG K40 Download Mode
If your K40 is bricked due to a failed system update (firmware update stuck) or for any other reason, the only way to restore your phone is by flashing an LG K40 stock firmware (kdz) using the Download Mode.
To boot your K40 into download mode –
- Power Off your Phone.
- Grab a micro USB data cable.
- Connect one end of the USB Cable to your K40.
- Press the Volume UP Button on your Phone.
- Keep the Volume key pressed, and connect the other end of the cable to the computer as shown above.
Your K40 phone must be now in the Download Mode as shown above.
To Unbrick, Upgrade or Downgrade your LG K40 Firmware, follow this guide – LG K40 Stock Firmware Download & Update using LGUP.
3. How to turn on Safe Mode on LG K40
After, Soft Reset, the next mode of troubleshooting should be Safe Mode. In Safe Mode, the data remains intact and it can fix issues caused by a downloaded 3rd party app.
To turn on Safe Mode on your K40 –
Long-Press the Power Button, until the “Power off” option, appears on the screen.
Now, Long-Press “Power Off” and a new “Safe Mode” window would appear on the screen.
Tap “TURN ON” to reboot the phone into Safe Mode.
If the issue you were facing in Normal Mode is fixed in the Safe Mode, then some downloaded app is responsible. By trial and error, we can detect the malicious app to fix the issue.
Downloaded apps are disabled in the Safe Mode. You can see “Antutu Go” and “Geekbench 4” is greyed out. We can uninstall these apps but cannot use them while in Safe Mode.
Let’s try to uninstall an app by going to Settings < Apps & Notifications < App Info.
Let’s try to uninstall Antutu Go.
You can see we can uninstall this app. This way keep on deleting the apps until you detect the app which is causing trouble.
To turn off safe mode, Pull down the notification bar and tap the notification “Safe Mode in On” as shown above.
Confirm this action by hitting “TURN OFF” as shown above.
Were you able to fix your issue using any of these 3 modes on your LG K40? Please share your outcome via the comment section below.