Fix: Motorola Moto G5 most common issues and how to resolve them

While the tech world is analyzing and talking about the latest flagships, the mid-budget handsets are arguably neglected. And the newly appointed ruler of this category is Moto G5 and/or its big brother Moto G5 Plus. Moto G5 offers astonishing features for as much as 200 USD while receiving positive insights from both users and tech professionals. Nonetheless, there are some issues you might encounter along the way.

We prepared a list of most-common issues reported by the users themselves, alongside with the proper workarounds. Have in mind that these are individual errors, and we’re still positive that this phone is more than great in many regards. In addition, if you’re even slightly suspicious about the hardware issues, contact your carrier or responsible service right away.

On the other hand, for the software-related issues, check the list below.

Overheating

There are problems and then there are ”problems”. It seems that all of the Motorola-produced handsets after they were taken by Lenovo have had problems with overheating. And, in the long run, this is a ”burning” issue. Joke aside, this is how one user elaborated his experience with the overheating:

”I bought G5 plus from flipkart. My problem is device is getting hot in normal operations like using internet on wifi. and of couse it get more hotter while gaming… Temperature reaches to 42°C… Is it normal or Should I replace it from the flipkart?’‘

This is a grave problem and it’s strongly advised to, once you experience massive heat, take some of the following steps.

• If the phone is too hot to hold it, you should remove the protective casing.
• Also, you can disable some background processes to reduce the overheating.
• Make sure that your Moto G5 isn’t exposed to direct sunlight for the extended period of time.
• Don’t use your device while charging. Your Moto G5 heats up quickly while turbo charging. Because of that keep your G5 away from the heat sources until it’s charged.
• Reduce brightness.
• Let the phone cool down for a bit if you’ve played demanding games for some time.

Finally, have in mind that there are security measures that should, once your phone reaches critical temperatures, shut it down in order to prevent the hardware damage. So, at least in that regard, you don’t need to worry.

Dual SIM/ SD card issue

The majority of Dual-SIM android handsets are limited to 2 slots. It’s not the same with Moto G5.  You can choose to run two SIM-cards + SD on the Dual-SIM iteration of the model. Moto G5 comes with 16 GB or 32 GB internal storage space, so many users tend to keep the multimedia files on an external SD card and use dual SIM cards. That’s great functionality provided by Moto G5, at least when it works. And that’s, sadly, not always the case. Hear out the complaint one user posted on the official Lenovo forum:

”When I use dual Sim slots with 2 sim card (my French providers are Orange and SFR), the Moto G5 cannot support the sdcard.
1. SD card with SIM 1 and 2 : only the second SIM is recognized and the SD card works well.
2. one time : SD card with sim slots 1 and 2 : all worked well during few minutes, and after that, android announced that only one sim card works (slot 2), the sim 1 was desactivated.
2. SD card with only SIM 2 : no problem.
3. inserting SD card with SIM 1 : no problem

What should I do ? any idea?”

There are few things you can do if you experience this or similar issues with your Dual-SIM or SIM + SD usage. Follow the instructions below to address them properly:

• Power Off your Moto G5 and remove SD and SIM cards from the slot. Clean the slot with the compressed air and re-insert the SD card.
• Backup your SD card on your PC and format it. Make sure to format or reformat the SD card on your device and not on the PC. Copy the backed-up content again.
• Wipe the cache partition. This procedure is explained below.

If the problem is persistent, there’s a chance that your Motorola Moto G5 is faulty, so make sure to take it for a repair.

Freezing and lag

This may be related to overheating but that’s the worst case scenario. Most of the times, the software is behind the frequent stutters certain users experienced. Those can affect your overall usability and most of the users refer to this as a deal-breaker to quite the capable device. Hardware-wise, G5, as most other mid-budget devices nowadays, should be powerful enough to provide you with the seamless use with octa-core CPU. However, that’s not something that this user reported on the official forum:

”Right from initial turn on the phone has done ghost typing. In fact no sooner had I left a less than pleased message on Amazon than the thing did yet another a five second burst of ghost typing. It also freezes periodically for at least five to ten second and/or until the screen is cycled on and off. Today it cleared the screen mid-conversation to wipe out a phone call. Have flushed system cache and disabled permission for very non-Google app that tries to go near system settings. But this is not an app problem, it is coming from somewhere inside of Andriod and/or the hardware. Couple this with a lousy camera for this class of phone and the user experience has been worthy of United Airlines. Despite the hype, has Lenovo laid a great big turkey egg?”

Even though this is probably an isolated case, there are more reports of the similar underwhelming performance drops. Luckily, if it’s not hardware but rather a software, there are a few workarounds that should help you resolve the problem at hand:

• Restart your Moto G5.
• Boot in the safe mode and look for changes. The procedure will be explained below.
• Check the temperature. Optimal handset temperature is 35 degrees.
• If a specific app is lagging, make sure to clear cache and restart the app.
• Wipe cache partition.

Wi-Fi issues

Even the properly functioning hardware isn’t enough if you’re having software issues. There seems to be a bug that affects wireless, which results in constant disconnections and loss of signal. Moreover, even after some updates provided by carriers or Lenovo themselves sorted things out, there are still users with connectivity issues. This is what one of them reported on the official Lenovo community forum:

”Hi,

My wifi disconnects automatically even signal is high and connects after sometime. The wifi range is also very less compared to my old phone. Please help me with the issue ASAP.

Thanks in advance.”

Since this is a bug, it should be resolved by the manufacturer. But, for the time being, we advise you to take these actions and we’ll probably get into clear:

• Forget the network and reconnect again.
• Reset Network Settings.
• Restart your modem or router.
• Disable Wi-Fi scanning.
• Make sure to use 2.4 GHz over 5 GHz frequency or vice versa and look for changes.
• Perform a factory reset. The procedure is explained below.

Poor video quality and in-video background noise

This was a grave problem since the introduction. Lenovo managed to resolve it to some extent with the patch, but some users are still experiencing strange noise in the background. Besides that, video recording quality is far from expected, especially when we take into consideration moderate main camera which isn’t rubbish and can record 4K videos.

This is the inconvenience one user experienced, and he decided to share it with the Lenovo community:

 ”Insanely pathetic background noise in audio captured via mic while recording videos. Many many users are facing this issue now. Feeling cheated by Moto. I am pretty sure now Lenovo makes a few flawless devices for top reviewers and then use their reviews to dupe customers who trust the reviews. Even cheap android phones handle noise cancellation better than this awful device’s mic.”

Firstly, make sure to install available updates. There’s a chance that they’ll relieve you of the issue at hand. Moreover, you can give a try to these workarounds:

• Restore camera settings to default.
• Wipe cache partition.
• Boot in safe mode and try using the camera.
• Use an alternative camera app from the Play Store until Lenovo addresses this issue.

VoLTE issues

VoLTE or Voice over LTE is a great feature that many users gladly turn to. However, there are multiple reports on the web that Moto G5 and VoLTE are not exactly on the right terms. Allegedly, even though both the device and network provider are supporting VoLTE, users were even unable to locate the exact settings to enable it. We brought to you an explanation of the problem we found on the Lenovo’s official forum:

”Hi, I got my Moto G5 plus (Indian edition) today. When I put my Reliance Jio sim in it, it fails to make calls using VoLTE. There is no option to enable VoLTE. When I try to manually enable it using [ removed ] menu, the VoLTE Provisioned flag turns off automatically. Please Help”

There are some workarounds you can try, but, most of the time, the best solution is to contact your carrier.

• Switch SIM card position.
• Restart Network settings.
• Set preferred network to 4G.
• Make sure you have acceptable network coverage.
• Perform a factory reset. Look below for the explanation of this procedure.

Make sure to contact your carrier if nothing worked.

Launcher3 crash

The ”Launcher3 isn’t responding” is an emerging error that’s somewhat connected to an underwhelming Android optimization on this device, or rather Moto UI interference with the Google apps. Certain Google pre-installed apps and features provoke an error on G5, especially Google Now. Lately, updates fixed this error for some users, while the others are still forced to cope with it. This is how one user described this strange occurrence on a forum:

”In Moto G5 Plus I swipe to the right from the home screen and goto the Google now page and open the news feed to read the news. When I come back to the Google now page it stops responding and then I get the message “Launcher3 isn’t responding”with two options “ Close app or Wait”. This happens repeatedly every time when I come back to the Google now page after reading the different news feeds. If I goto multiple news feeds (sometimes 3 or more) from the Google now page, the phone restarts automatically. Can you please provide solution for this issue.”

There are some temporary workarounds that should help you resolve the issue for some time. For the ultimate solution, you’ll probably need to perform a factory reset.

• Navigate to Settings > Apps and locate Launcher3. Clear cache and data. Restart your device and look for changes.
• Wipe cache partition.
• Restore factory settings.

How to perform a factory reset, safe boot and wiping of the cache partition on Moto G5

Safe boot

1. Press and hold the Power button to bring the shutdown pop-up screen.
2. Touch and hold ”Power Off” until you’re prompted with the ”Reboot to safe mode” message.
3. Tap OK to confirm.
4. After reboot, your device will start in Safe mode.
5. Make sure to check previously installed applications that might have been causing the issue you’re trying to address.

Wipe cache partition

1. Shut down your handset.
2. Press and hold the Power button and the Volume Down key until the device starts.
3. Use Volume keys (Up and Down) to navigate through the menu until you reach Recovery mode.
4. Press Power button to choose the Recovery mode.
5. Once you see the Android with the exclamation mark, press and hold the Power button and, while holding it, single-press the Volume Down key.
6. Use Volume keys again to navigate through the Recovery menu and highlight ”wipe cache partition”.
7. Press the Power button to select it and confirm if asked.
8. The procedure should start and it will last for approximately 10 minutes.

Reset to factory settings

1. Backup your data on PC or cloud.
2. Tap Settings.
3. Open Backup & Reset.
4. Tap Factory data reset.
5. Choose Reset Device.
6. Select Erase Everything.
7. The device will restart and all your settings will be restored to default values.

That should do it. If you have alternative solutions or more problems we can add to this list, make sure to tell us in the comments section below. We’ll be glad to help if we can. Thanks for reading and have a good day.