Initialization process taking a long time, freezing the device

For some it is a common practice to reinitialize a phone/tablet for many possible reasons ... Suppose you have already factory reset your device but it gets stuck on the Initialization screen. You restart the device and even reset the device back to factory again but you still get right back to the initialize screen with no change ... 

If you can't take the battery out anymore, the next step is to take out the SIM card. Attempt to re-initialize the device with the SIM out; once you get past the step where the device "froze", the SIM card can be put back in.
You should then be able to continue the boot process and finish setting up the device.

This is not a common issue that you may rarely ever see but even as rare as it is can make a bad day even worse. This may not always work but it is one of the few items that can be removed from most devices and is a simple trick to try that potentially could save some time and frustration.