SAMSUNG GALAXY S4 WON’T TURN ON/BLACK SCREEN ISSUE

Samsung GALAXY S4 WON’T TURN ON/BLACK SCREEN ISSUE

We give you another post that answers some questions sent to us by our readers about their #GalaxyS4. If you want to look for more Galaxy S4 troubleshooting, don’t forget to visit this page.

If you are looking for solutions to your own #Android issue, you can contact us by using the link provided at the bottom of this page,

GALAXY S4 WON’T TURN ON/BLACK SCREEN ISSUE

I bought an S4 (Sprint locked) about month ago from eBay. I activated the phone with Freedompop. It was fine until yesterday. 2 days ago, I saw the notice of “System Update” so I installed it. Actually I was not sure if it is Update of Android system or firmware update. It was fine at that moment and then it started to update some apps automatically.

However, yesterday morning (Sat) S4 was blacked out, and it could not be turned on. I plugged it to the wall charger, but it showed 50% battery left, then vibrated and turned on itself, showing Samsung logo and Sprint logo, but it blacked out before showing the screen lock interface. Then it started again. I pulled the battery, then when I put battery back. It vibrated. Sometimes it was turned on showing logo, sometimes not, but most of the time blacked out before showing PIN for “screen lock”.

I tried Recovery. It never succeeded because the phone was blacked out before I could reach anything. When I pressed 3 keys, sometimes no response at all. I guess the phone was in the mode “power on”, but just showing blackout.

Please suggest if the battery has issues or Cache issues, or anything else. Thanks. — Sheen

Solution: Hi Sheen. At this point, we really can’t say for sure what might the cause of the problem be. An issue like this can be caused by software or hardware malfunction. It’s good to check first though if a software glitch may be the reason for the trouble. If you can’t boot your S4 in recovery mode, consider restarting it in download mode (Volume Down, Power, and Home buttons simultaneously). If the phone will only boot in download mode, also called Odin mode, then the most likely reason for the problem may be firmware corruption. You have to try flashing the stock ROM for your phone in order to bring it back online again. If you don’t have any idea how to do this, simply search Google for online resources.

You can also try to restart the phone in safe mode to see if it boots that way. While safe mode is most useful if you suspect that a third party app is messing up with the system, it still is a good way to see if your device responds to button combination command. Simply follow these steps on how to boot your phone in safe mode:

• Turn the device off completely.
• Press and hold the Power button.
• Once the Samsung Galaxy S4 logo appears on the screen, release the Power button.
• As soon as you release the Power button, press and hold the Volume Down key.
• Continue holding the Volume Down key until the phone has completed the reboot process.
• If you can read ‘Safe Mode‘ at the bottom left corner of the screen, release the Volume Down key.  Otherwise, repeat the process until you can boot the phone to Safe Mode.

If your phone won’t respond to any button combination, that’s a clear indication that there’s a hardware problem behind. Hardware  trouble can range from simple power button failure to other components not working inside. Kindly bring the phone to your local repair shop for diagnostics.