These days, more phone companies are beginning to introduce affordable gadgets for people who want quality on a budget. After the Moto G made a splash in the midrange cellphone pool, Motorola decided to up the ante with the fantastic Moto E. This addition to the family is even cheaper, but comes with the same all-around solid build quality and features that users expect. With great entry-level specifications, the Moto E is be the ultimate phone for the consumer looking to spend less. Of course, smartphones at any price point have their fair share of faults. Today, we’ll be assessing some of the problems that Moto E owners may face, as well as providing potential solutions on how to fix them.
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Related: 10 Best Moto E cases and covers
Disclaimer – It’s important to remember that all phones can suffer problems. The Motorola Moto E is still a great smartphone at an unbeatable price point.
Problem #1 – Blurry, out-of-focus photos
Some users have been conveying disappointment regarding the quality of the photos captured by their Moto E. Although the phone advertises a modest 5 MP camera, the fact that it doesn’t have a flash, auto-focus, or front-facing capture are contributing factors.
Potential Solutions –
- Unfortunately, this is one of those things that users will have to cope with regarding this phone. You can’t take any stunning low light photos or close-ups, as there is no way to overcome the fixed focus.
- To boost the resolution a little, make sure that the HDR mode is set to ‘On’, this should give you a sharper, more vibrant result. It will be on ‘auto’ by default.
Problem #2 – Random reboots
At such a great value price, you can’t expect the Moto E to be the fastest phone out there, but that doesn’t mean that you should have to deal with random reboots. Some users have expressed concerns about the fact that their phone automatically switches itself off and on again.
Potential Solutions –
- Most of the time, the problem behind random reboots is a troublesome app. You can try switching the phone onto safe mode, by pressing and holding the power button and waiting for a menu to pop up on screen. When the menu appears, tap and hold the ‘power off’ selection then choose ‘OK’. If, after turning on safe mode, you no longer experience random reboots, you can typically assume that an app is the reason behind your glitch problems.
- If you do find that an app is responsible, then you can try to uninstall all of your applications one by one to see whether you can find the one responsible this way. On the other hand, to save time, you could just use a factory reset to clear the phone, and then selectively re-install your apps.
- If an app isn’t to blame, then you’re probably suffering from a case of faulty hardware. Contact the store where you picked up your phone and try to have a replacement sent out.
Problem #3 –Rattling Back Cover
Several Motorola Moto E users have issued complaints that the phone’s back cover is loose, leading to shaking and rattling when they move the phone.
Potential Solutions –
- Get in touch with your retailer and ask for a replacement, and they should send one out for free. Make sure that you do not attempt to remove the back of the phone from the top when replacing your cover.
- If a replacement cover is still loose, then you could stick a small piece of tape to the interior of the cover or use a tiny bit of superglue on the clips to tighten the fit. However, you must be careful with these options, as you do not want to cause further damage to your phone.
Problem #4 – The Charger Keeps Overheating
Although a couple of people have complained that the Motorola Moto E itself does overheat sometimes when playing games, or using the screen for an extended period of time, it doesn’t seem to be a major problem. A more profound issue is that the charger heats up significantly for many users after just ten minutes of use.
Potential Solutions:
- First of all, make sure you’re using the cable and charger that were provided with your Moto E. Then, take off the back of your phone and check that the battery is an official Motorola model.
- Ensure that the charger is securely plugged into the socket and that the cable is firmly plugged into the Moto E. Make sure that the contacts are clean, and attempt using another wall socket to see if there are any noticeable differences.
- If you have an alternative charger, you can attempt to use this and see whether the problem continues.
- If you have ensured that the problem is the charger itself, and not your power supply or Moto E battery, then contact Motorola, or your retailer for a replacement.
Problem #5 – Unresponsive Pixels
Some users have reported problems with stuck pixels on their phone screen. This typically looks like a dead black dot somewhere on your screen that won’t go away when you change pages.
Potential Solutions:
- There is an application that can be downloaded that will help to detect unresponsive pixels within your phone and fix them, called Dead Pixel Detect and Fix. For the app to work, you may have to run it for a few hours, but it may solve your problem.
- The only other option for dealing with this issue is contacting your retailer or Motorola and asking for a replacement handset. If you can clearly see the stuck pixels, they should not be able to refuse you a replacement.
Problem #6 – Sudden Sound Problems
Some owners of the Moto E have reported that they suddenly are no longer able to hear sound from their media applications on their speakers. After restarting the phone, the issue may be fixed for a couple of seconds, but then the problem arises again, acting as though there are headphones plugged in by providing the ‘too loud for too long’ warning.
Potential Solutions:
- Attempt a hard reset, as there may be a conflict somewhere with cached data. By resetting your phone to its factory settings, you will erase all data from the system, including any damaged files that could be causing audio problems.
- If you don’t want to lose data with a hard reset, try pressing and holding the power button until you see a menu with the ‘power off’ and ‘airplane mode’ options. Below those selections you should see three icons, two of which will look like speakers. Select the speaker with a line through it, indicating speaker off, then power down, power back up, and selected ‘speaker on’.
Problem #7 – ‘Emergency Service is blocked’
Many users have apparently experienced an issue where service is lost and they are given the notification: ‘Restricted access changed – Emergency service is blocked’. Apparently, this is more of a network issue than a software or hardware fault to do with Motorola itself.
Potential solutions:
- Carefully remove your SIM card; ensure that it and the slot for it is clean, before reinserting.
- If you used a SIM that had to be cut, instead of a Micro SIM, you might suffer more problems. Try ordering a Micro SIM from your carrier to use instead.
So there are some of the most common problems faced by people with the Motorola Moto E. We will continue to update this list for you if more problems arise, and if you’ve struggled with any of these issues, let us know if our solutions worked for you. If you have other issues with your device, mention them in the comments and we’ll try to find a potential fix for you!
Here are the guides on how to perform a soft reset and a hard reset (factory reset) on the Motorola Moto E.
Soft Reset
- If your display is already off, press the power key to turn it back on.
- Press down the Power/lock key for somewhere between eight and ten seconds.
- Your phone will perform an automatic restart
If this does not work, then take the battery out of your phone, wait thirty seconds, then reinsert it. Press the Power/lock key to turn your phone back on.
Factory Reset
Remember that by performing a factory reset, all of the data in your phone will be erased. If you have any important things saved on your phone, you should back up before a hard reset.
To factory reset your phone through your phone’s menu
- Unlock your phone and tap ‘menu’
- Go to ‘settings’ then ‘backup and reset’
- From there, select ‘factory data reset phone’
- Agree with the prompts that appear on your screen
- Select ‘reset phone’.
To factory reset your phone in the case of a frozen screen, you can use hardware buttons:
- Start by turning off your phone – simply press the power button and select ‘power off’ on the menu.
- Enter the Moto E ‘fastboot’ mode by pressing the power button and volume down key at the same time for six to seven seconds. Release when the fastboot mode menu is displayed.
- From fastboot mode, use the volume down and up buttons to scroll through the menu.
- Select your ‘recovery’ option and select by pressing down the power button.
- From ‘recovery’ choose ‘wipe data factory reset’
- You can choose to wipe the cache partition on your phone also from the main menu of recovery by picking ‘advanced’ then selecting ‘wipe dalvick cache’.
Important connections get missed and legitimate businesses lose money when consumers no longer pick up the phone
Adam Cheriff, M.D., is chief of clinical operations for Weill Cornell Medicine, the giant health system with 1.8 million patient-visits a year. He and his colleagues are also on the front lines of the robocall wars, because he sees firsthand the negative impact as people no longer reliably answer their phones.
It works like this, Cheriff says: A person sees a doctor and is referred to a specialist. But when the specialist’s office tries to call the patient for an appointment, no one answers the phone. The patient—not recognizing the incoming phone number—sometimes assumes it’s a robocall and refuses to answer, Cheriff and others at Weill Cornell have concluded.
“It’s a significant problem,” he says. “We call and call and call and can’t get hold of patients. They don’t pick up the phone.”
Eventually, if the patient never answers, the office gives up. Cheriff says Cornell Weill doesn’t keep track of all that wasted staff time, or how much it adds to overall operating costs that are eventually passed on to all patients. “It’s hard to say with precision, but it’s not a small number,” he says.
Weill Cornell’s operational headache is borne out in a recent Consumer Reports nationally representative survey. It found that 70 percent of Americans don’t answer their phones when they don’t recognize the incoming number.
It's but one example of the profound way robocalls have become much more than just a personal nuisance for consumers who get their share of what tracking company YouMail says is the 175 million robocalls placed every day in the U.S. Our phones—which once held a respected place in the heart of the American household—are now something many distrust for fear they’ll be exposed to scams or schemes. And that distrust—and the call-avoidance behavior that results—is causing a major rupture to routine communications that, ultimately, costs everyone time, money, and more.
Consumer Reports talked to representatives from industries large and small that rely heavily on the telephone about the impact robocalls are having on the way we communicate—or fail to communicate—with each other. Businesses are feeling it on their bottom lines. But the don't-answer-the-phone backlash is also having an effect on other callers that parents and consumers in general might want to hear from, such as public schools, churches, charitable organizations, political campaigns, or public opinion survey takers, Consumer Reports has found.
It's well-documented that victims are cheated out of billions each year from robocall scammers. However, there doesn't appear to be an official tally of how much businesses that rely on the phone for legitimate purposes are losing in terms of financial or other resources. Mark W. Brennan, a partner at the international law firm Hogan Lovells in Washington, D.C., who advises corporate clients on communications issues, says 'the financial costs to consumers and businesses alike are substantial.'
As one example, he tells of cable and utility companies that send installation or repair crews out in a truck to people's homes for an appointment. 'Normally they will call to confirm. But if the customer doesn't answer the phone for the appointment reminder and the truck shows up when they're not there, by one estimate, that's a $150 cost.'
And the problem is about more than just dollars and cents. 'In the healthcare context, missed appointments from ignored reminder calls can cause significant treatment delays,' Brennan says. 'Adherence reminders have been shown to improve patient outcomes, so it's potentially life-threatening when those phone calls are missed.'
Missed Connections
Many small businesses that depend on the phone face a double whammy. Paul Allen, who retired as an industrial engineer in 2013 and started the Hope Springs Distillery in Lilburn, Ga., says it is becoming harder to get people to answer the phone when he calls to suggest doing business together. When someone doesn’t answer, he has to call again—or give up on that business opportunity.
At the same time, he needs to answer every call when his own phone rings; it might be a supplier, a contractor, a government regulator, a distributor, or a customer. Instead, it’s often a computerized voice asking him to press 1 to talk to an agent about vacations or insurance or credit cards—typical sales robocalls.
The loss of the phone as a convenient, direct business tool is taking its toll in extra hassle and also wasted time on the phone. It's also robbing him and his wife Betsey Dahlberg, a retired lawyer, of a lot of the fun in starting a small business, Allen says. “Robocalls have become a time-stealing way of life for us.”
The reluctance of people to answer the phone is also having an impact beyond the business world, where many charities raise money through calls, some of them using robocalls. Charities, in general, take issue with being lumped in with other robocallers pitching vacations or mortgage relief or scammy-sounding anti-aging products. The Red Cross, for example, says it uses “broadcast voicemails,” a kind of robocall, to encourage people to donate blood.
Charities can't say for sure whether any decline in donations is because of the consumer backlash against robocalls, but Gail Perry, a North Carolina-based philanthropy consultant who has advised hospital, university, sports, and social service organizations across the country, says, “Across the board, people say it is having a huge impact on donations.”
She said the decline in donations, in large part, is because small donors who gave money in the past and year after year because of annual telephone reminders are no longer answering the phone. “It is undoubtedly having a big impact on the smaller donor,” she said, adding that 'leaving a message has some impact, but it's not as effective as a live conversation.'
Chintan Turakhia, a survey research expert, says robocalls have been one major factor leading to a sharp drop in the response rates to the random-sample telephone surveys that play a critical role in providing information for robust social and public policy debates.
Turakhia, executive vice president of Strategic Research and Emerging Technologies at SSRS in Glenn Mills, Penn., says responses to telephone surveys have 'declined a good 15 percent compared to what we used to achieve as recently as last year.' He says the lower response rate makes surveying more expensive and difficult, although he says it hasn't led to a deterioration of survey quality because pollsters can compensate for the non responses using fancy statistical techniques.
What Can You Do?
If you are sick of unwanted robocalls but hoping to not miss important calls you want to receive, there are a few steps you can take.
Keep it to yourself. Avoid routinely giving your phone number to retailers. Do they really need your digits? Probably not.
Join the registry. Sign up on the National Do Not Call Registry, which tells legitimate telemarketers you do not want to be bothered.
Block it. When you get an unwanted call on your cell phone, take the time to enter it into your list of blocked numbers.
Use robocall blocking services. You can try using the blocking services that your phone provider offers. These alert you that an incoming call may be from a telemarketer, and detect and block calls from probable scammers.
Try third-party apps. You can also use third-party apps, such as Nomorobo, Hiya, YouMail, Mr. Number, RoboKiller, and Truecaller. With the exception of the landline version of Nomorobo, Consumer Reports has not tested these services or apps, but consumers who downloaded them and responded to the CR survey said they have spotty performance.
Use online portals, when provided. To avoid missing calls or any news from a doctor, Cheriff urges patients to use the online patient portals being rolled out by healthcare facilities large and small.
Create contact lists. Another important move is to create a robust contact list in your phone. Record the names and numbers of banks, doctors, service providers, friends, anyone you might want to get a call from. Their info will pop up when they call, and you’ll know it’s from a source you know.