Step 1  Turn the mobile phone on and off

It may sound obvious but whenever I get someone who cannot make a call, cannot text or even some keys do not work the first thing I ask them is, have you tried turning your mobile phoneon and off. We refer to it as a power cycle and it can fix a lot of problems, a customer will often ask me why should they have to do that. You must bear in mind that most mobiles are on 24/7 there are not many electrical devices that have the same demands put upon them. By performing a power cycle you are giving the mobile phone a breather.

Step 2  If the problem still exists try a master reset

This is like a super power cycle if you will, a mobile phone may look pretty basic from the menu you see but there are thousands of processes running in the background that determine how your mobile phone run. So if one of those processes is not working correctly it is very difficult to diagnose and also even more difficult to change. The best thing to do is a factory reset, it is often found in settings and should be relatively easy to find. It will change your ringtone and wallpaper and any other customization your have made but will not delete your pictures or any other data, (be careful with Sony Ericsson handsets though there is an option which does do this, just pay particular attention to what it says on the screen).

Step 3  Still Broken

If these are both unsuccessful you should check your mobile phone for water damage, there is usually an indicator on your battery which should be a white dot or small square, if it is any other colour then I am afraid you are in trouble. Water damage does not always manifest itself immediately so that time you thought you got away with using it in the rain 3 months ago could easily only now just be affecting your mobile phone, if this is the case your Cheap Cell Phones insurance should cover you for a replacement.

Other than that the mobile phone could simply have a bug, the mobile phone manufacturers are under such pressure to release new handsets the quickest, the testing time before release is getting shorter and shorter this is why they entitle you to free software upgrades throughout your entire first year of ownership so you can make sure you have the fastest most feature packed experience possible with your handset. This is done by either sending your Mobile Phones  to the manufacturer (usually 28 days) or the easier option is to take it to a Carphone Warehouse where on occasion they can fix it on site if they can, failing that they send it to a central location where the turnaround time is around 14 days.

Step 4  If all else fails

Try finding people with the same problem. If your problem is on a Nokia n95 and you are having trouble sending texts type “nokia n95 text problem forum” into the Google and you will be granted access to a world where people are having the same problem where most of the time someone else has done the hard work and found a solution already that you can apply. If this is fruitless you can always appeal for help by crating your own topic, the Nokia forum is especially helpful with the engineers themselves often posting solutions.