You depend on cellular/mobile data on your Android phone for a thousand and one things, including messaging, social networking, navigation, music and video streaming. As such, having cellular data suddenly stop working can be a nightmare. Why is your cellular data not working?
Your 5G or 4G LTE cellular data not working may be due to a few reasons. It may be a wrong setting on your device, a physical problem with your smartphone, a network fault from your carrier, or even a hardware fault in your smartphone.
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How to fix Cellular Data not working on Android phones
Outlined below are the steps you need to take to fix the issue. Try one after the other, till the issue goes away.
1. Check to make sure Airplane Mode isn’t enabled
If you mistakenly toggled Flight Mode or Airplane Mode, then your Android phone cannot connect to the mobile network at all and cellular data cannot work. To check, look at your phone’s notification bar at the top of the screen: if Airplane mode is active, you will see an airplane icon in place of your network icon. To toggle it off, swipe down and disable it in the drop-down menu.
2. Check Cellular Data Settings
Another possibility is that you inadvertently turned off cellular data on your device. To check if this is the case, again look at the notification bar: if you are not seeing a 3G, 4G, LTE, or 5G icon there, your mobile data is turned off. To turn it back on, swipe down from the top right to bring up the drop-down menu, look for the menu item that says “Mobile data”, and tap on it to enable it. Your cellular data should start working now.
3. Restart Your Phone
Sometimes, a restart serves as a refresher of electronic systems and fixes issues. It has been known to fix cellular data problems. So, let’s restart your Android smartphone at this point. Hold down the power button, then on your screen, select the Restart option. When your device powers back on, check to see if cellular data now works. If it does, congratulations.
4. Factory Reset Your Android smartphone
A factory reset will erase everything on your device – photos, contacts, settings, videos, and other files. You should make sure that you have a backup of the data on your phone, so you don’t lose any important information. Then, go to Settings > System > Reset phone, and tap Erase All Data. Your phone should restart as good as new.
5. Contact Your Wireless Carrier
If none of the above fixes have helped, there is a chance that the issue is from your wireless carrier – perhaps a network fault, or a maintenance issue. Call your carrier’s customer support to lay a complaint and see if they can fix the cellular data not working issue at their end.
6. Contact Your Phone Maker’s Support
Finally, if you have gone through all the above steps and your Android phone’s cellular data is still not working, perhaps your device has a hardware fault. In which case, it is time to contact your phone brand e.g. Samsung, Xiaomi, OnePlus, Motorola, Nokia, TECNO, etc, for them to have a look at it. All the best.