Embodiments of this application provide a cell obtaining method and a terminal to reduce power consumption of the terminal. Technical solutions provided in the embodiments of this application are as follows: When a terminal is connected to a current source serving cell, the terminal obtains a first quality parameter of the current source serving cell; if the first quality parameter is less than a first preset threshold, the terminal determines a measurement cell set; the terminal measures each measurement cell in the measurement cell set to obtain each corresponding second quality parameter; and the terminal determines a target serving cell based on the second quality parameter.