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Software buttons stopped working

C

Christosf360

Lurker
Hello everyone,

Out of the blue, the square "Close App" button on my phone has stopped working. When I press it, the phone will still vibrate indicating that it has seen that it has been pressed but the active App will not close. I had a look at the settings of the device hoping to find something that will fix it but I couldn't find anything. Does anyone have any ideas as to how I could fix this?...? The circular button has also stopped, the one that closes all Apps down.

*****very frustrating****

Many thanks
 
These are not standard android buttons, so are they something WileyFox added or some app of your own? That may affect possible solutions.

Assuming they are part of the system, my first thoughts are generic fixes: reboot the phone, followed by go into recovery mode and wipe the cache (just cache, nothing else).
 
The buttons that don't work are the square and round buttons which I thought together with the triangular that takes you one step back, are common in Android devices. these usually appear at the bottom of the screen, they are not visible all the time. I have tried rebooting but that didn't solve the problem. Also that area of the screen seems to be working OK, when I try to press the square button, the phone vibrates indicating that it "sees" the button has been pressed. I assume therefore that the screen is fine in that spot.
 
Ok, you called it a "close apps" button, which is what confused me - Google refer to it as the "multitasking" button because its function is to swap between recent apps (the fact that you can close them as well is secondary - I almost never use it for that). Hence I thought you had a dedicated task-killing button, which would not be standard.

Hmm, if part of the system UI isn't working and clearing cache doesn't help the remaining solutions are more drastic. I don't suppose you have any navigation bar customisation or button mapping apps installed (i.e. things that might interfere with the nav bar)? Otherwise it might be worth doing some backups in case you have to reset the phone.
 
Apologies for the confusion, I was certain it would have a proper name and that was not not what I was using to call it :-).

I don't run anything special on the phone and the most annoying thing is that this just happened. One night I went to set the alarm and I noticed I couldn't use this button. I didn't download anything and the phone didn't do any updates so it can't be related to anything like that.

(if you are not using the multitasking button to close Apps down, how do you close an App? Having many open at the same time, doesn't it consume more battery and use up more memory?...?)

If I were to reset the phone, would I need to save any photos and my telephone directory? Anything else?...? (I don't use the phone to download files or anything like that)

Many thanks for your input!!!
 
I don't close apps. Recent apps are generally just "sleeping", so not using battery (one that actually runs to a significant extent in the background without that being needed for its task will be uninstalled and replaced with one that works properly). As for memory, the OS is designed to keep recent or frequently-used apps in memory ready for when you nextuse them. Loading them from scratch uses more energy and is slower, and if the RAM is needed for something else the phone will clear them out itself. So I just leave the operating system to do its job and don't kill apps, haven't for many years.

A reset erases all user-installed apps, all updates to system apps, and all data. So everything that's on the phone will go (SD card should be ok, but I'd remove it before resetting to be sure. Remember that /sdcard is the internal storage, not the actual SD card, so anything on that will go). So back up contacts, photos, messages (SMS, MMS, WhatsApp, maybe some other messaging services), any calendars that aren't synced with a cloud service,really anything you don't want to lose. If you care about app data (game progress, settings) back them up too: some will let you make backups, for others you can back up to Google or use an app called Helium. And get all backups copied off the device. This is why resets are a pain and I prefer to avoid them, but I don't know what specific system app would need clearing individually to fix this (if there is one).

If you want to make the phone usable in the short term, either while sorting backups or to give a little longer to see whether anyone has a less destructive idea, you could try one of the "floating navigation bar" apps in the Play Store - add a second one and see whether that works. Awkward, which is why I say short term, but it might help.
 
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