Does your Kindle keep shutting off, and it’s starting to worry you?
Take a deep breath! I know that having this happen can make a thousand thoughts race through your head, but in most cases, there’s nothing to worry about.
Having your favorite reading device fail can be very annoying. Especially when you’re in the middle of a long commute or snug beneath the covers on a cold night.
I want to help you solve this problem once and for all, which is why I’ve prepared the list below. In it, you’ll find 4 reasons why this might be happening, as well as some easy solutions to address them.
If your Kindle keeps shutting off, it might be due to a nearly dead battery, cold weather, or a corrupted file. Provided that’s not the case, then you might also need to consider that an internal component is faulty.
Read more below to keep the lights on!
First, let’s check the condition of your device’s battery.
Believe it or not, just like people, batteries age and degrade as time passes. There’s even a process called chemical degradation, in which the ions that charge lithium batteries start breaking down, thus becoming less and less efficient.
Depending on how long you’ve been using your device, it might be more or less likely that something like this is to blame. And even if your Kindle is brand new, there’s always the possibility of a bad apple slipping through the cracks of the quality control process.
A dead battery could not only explain why your Kindle keeps shutting off randomly, but also why it’s always restarting, or why you see your screen flicker occasionally.
Solution: The first thing you want to do in a situation like this is to check your warranty status. If it’s still active, under no circumstances do you want to take it to an external business for repairs, as this will likely void it.
Give Amazon’s support center a call and explain the situation. They’re pretty good with repairs and don’t typically argue too much to replace a bad unit.
This next one might surprise you, as it’s a little-known factor that can cause a wide number of issues if the right conditions are met.
Believe it or not, yet another reason why your Kindle keeps shutting off, is that you’re trying to use it in very cold weather. Yes, you read that right. As it turns out, most mobile devices struggle under certain temperatures, and surprisingly, the threshold is much higher than you’d think.
Trying to use your Kindle at temperatures of 45 degrees Fahrenheit (ca. 7 °C) or lower can be a challenge due to the chemical process of powering the device. As you may know, temperature affects the speed at which atoms and molecules move. Heat accelerates them, and cold slows them down almost to a halt.
When used in cold weather, your device’s battery might have trouble keeping the lights on, as the electrically-charged ion particles are moving too slowly from the power source to the rest of the circuits.
Solution: Luckily, getting things back to normal is very easy. Simple actions, like placing your Kindle inside your jacket, or getting a case that can isolate some cold in the environment could be more than enough.
Next, let’s make sure that one of your e-books or other files are not to blame for this situation.
Third-party software can be tempting, and so can free versions of your favorite books. But what if I told you that downloading the wrong file could be the reason your Kindle keeps shutting off?
Now, we’re not talking about viruses here, so relax! Sometimes, even official “clean” Amazon files and e-books can become corrupted for several reasons and start causing problems.
The best way to tell whether a particular file or book is responsible for this is by looking closely at your device’s behavior. If it works normally with other files, but it shuts off as soon as you open a specific one, chances are you’ll have to remove the suspicious element for good.
Solution: There are many ways to delete files from your Kindle, but here’s my favorite one:
This process can also help when your device is not opening a certain book. But the difference is that in that instance, you can redownload the suspicious material and do some tests. In this particular scenario, I’d stay as far away from the recently deleted file as possible to prevent this from happening again in the future.
Lastly, let’s consider the possibility that the issue doesn’t come from your end, but rather from the factory’s.
In the previous sections, we discussed how it was not impossible to have a bad unit slip through Amazon’s quality control team in the production line. However, issues like these can not only arise with the battery but with other components as well.
In order to stay on, your Kindle uses many internal elements that work together and communicate to work as you’d expect. When one of them fails, the entire chain falls apart, and suddenly, your reading device turns into an expensive doorstop.
Now, a bad internal component may manifest itself not only due to a factory error but also due to user mishandling. If you’ve ever accidentally dropped your Kindle or don’t always treat it with the utmost care, chances are these habits might have knocked something loose over time.
Solution: If you’ve already ruled out all software-related culprits and are certain this situation has something to do with your device’s hardware, give Amazon’s customer support center a call. As stated earlier, if your warranty is still valid, you should be able to get repairs at no charge.
That about covers it.
When your Kindle keeps shutting off, a pleasant and relaxing reading session can quickly become a big source of frustration.
I hope this piece has helped you better understand why this might be happening and what you can do about it. More often than not, keeping your Kindle warm, and making sure that its battery is in good condition, should get everything back to normal.
I really appreciate you sticking with me all the way to the end. If this article was interesting to read and answered your most burning questions, you’ll be happy to know that there’s new content to learn from every week.
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Best of luck to you!
Detective ‘Gerry’ Molina is one of the most prolific detectives on our TechDetective team. He’s known for his ability to crack down on multitudes of tech crimes on behalf of you – the citizens of the internet. Molina is often the first point of contact for many cases, working to help free victims from the tyranny of tech issues.
