If you have Verizon, yesterday might have been a bit chaotic. The wireless carrier’s coverage was down for large swaths of the country for much of the day, leading to confusion, frustration, and, for some, conspiracy theories. I saw some users on X post cryptic messages like “This is how it starts,” and “These are the end times.” It’s good to know in times of service disruption, we can all keep a level head.
But despite claims to the contrary, the world didn’t end yesterday, and Verizon fixed the issue. The company issued a statement at 10:20 p.m. ET, confirming the outage had been resolved, and that Verizon would contact affected customers directly to issue account credits. While that doesn’t necessarily make up for a full day of network downtime, at least Verizon users can get back online and make calls when not connected to wifi.
But some customers out there aren’t back to normal. In fact, they’re still seeing the same “SOS” alert on their phones they saw yesterday. For these users, the outage is very much still happening, as they cannot access the internet or communicate with others without either going through satellite connectivity, or finding a wifi connection. When you need to be out and about, especially on the road, that isn’t an option.
How to get your Verizon phone out of SOS mode
Luckily, there’s a simple solution here, one that Verizon shared in its post about the outage’s resolution: restart your phone. It doesn’t matter if you already restarted your phone yesterday during the outage: In order to see results, you’ll need to power off your phone and turn it back on after Verizon implemented its fix.
Different smartphones have different restart methods, but here are some tips for the most popular models:
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Restarting an iPhone: Press and hold one of the volume buttons together with the side (power) button, until you see the power-off slider. Slide to power off, then wait for the screen to go totally black. After about 30 seconds, you can press and hold the side button to power it back on. Note: If your iPhone has a Home button, you can simply press and hold the side button to pull up the power-off slider.
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Restarting a Samsung Galaxy: Press and hold the volume down button and side button until you see power options appear. Here, choose “Restart,” then tap “Restart” again.
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Restarting a Pixel: If you have a Pixel 6 or newer, press and hold the volume up button and side button for a few seconds, then tap “Restart” when it appears. If you have a Pixel 5 or older, simply hold the side button until the phone restarts.
If your phone model isn’t listed here, you can search the internet for specific instructions on how to restart it. Typically, though, the process involves holding both the side button and one of the volume buttons.