Hard Resetting my Galaxy Nexus

I was out of the office for most of yesterday, and as such my Galaxy Nexus was away from a power supply for more than 8 hours and naturally died of a flat battery. The next morning when I tried to turn it on it would not boot up. It would only get as far as the Google logo before restarting. I tried removing the battery and retrying, but to no avail.

Finally I performed a hard reset on the phone, wiping all the data and rebooting. This seemed to “fix” the problem. Not sure what the problem was, I was not in the mood to troubleshoot the issue in great detail. Just glad the phone is working again, though I now have to go through the process of restoring all my data, contacts etc to my phone. Thankfully I back most everything up to Google servers so for the most part everything should be okay.

I have bought a replacement battery for the Galaxy Nexus, and I’m waiting for it to arrive so I’m never faced with a situation where my phone is completely dead and unavailable for me to use. I don’t know why having the phone die of a flat battery should cause such a major issue with it, but I’ll know in the future when my phone is on the verge of running entirely flat, I will simply switch it off myself rather than let it run out.

For those who are wondering, you can perform a hard reset on a Galaxy Nexus by holding down both volume buttons and then pressing the power button when the phone is off. It will bring up a picture of an Android, and give you a series of options, one of which is "Hard Reset". Only use it as a last resort!