It should be understood that, in this embodiment of this application, the candidate target cell is a neighboring cell of the serving cell currently accessed by the terminal device. In an implementation, the candidate target cell may include all neighboring cells served by the serving cell. In this case, the neighboring cell and the candidate target cell may be used interchangeably. The neighboring cell mentioned in this specification can be replaced with the candidate target cell, or the candidate target cell mentioned in this specification can be replaced with the neighboring cell. In another implementation, the candidate target cell may include some neighboring cells served by the serving cell. In this case, the neighboring cell is different from the candidate target cell, the neighboring cell and the candidate target cell cannot be used interchangeably, and a range of the neighboring cell is greater than a range of the candidate target cell. This embodiment of this application is not limited thereto. Specifically, whether the neighboring cell and the candidate target cell may be used interchangeably is described in detail below, and details are not described herein. Optionally, after the terminal device determines the first target cell that satisfies the trigger condition, the method may further include: The terminal device performs a handover, that is, the terminal device is handed over from the serving cell to the first target cell. For example, the terminal device performs random access to the first target cell, to be handed over to the first target cell.