How To Fix A Galaxy S3 Won’t Turn On [Troubleshooting Guide]
We receive hundreds of emails each week from our readers reporting–many actually complain–about the problems they encountered with their phone. In one of the emails, our reader, a Samsung Galaxy S3 owner, said his phone was fully-charged but about an hour later, he found it turned off. The worst part is, he couldn’t power it on.
What happened? Well, even Samsung engineers couldn’t answer that question without performing some troubleshooting procedures.
In this post, we will attempt to troubleshoot the phone exhausting all possible ways to bring it back to life.
How To Fix A Galaxy S3 Won’t Turn On
Step 1: Hit the Power button
Yes, please do. This is the first thing you should do when troubleshooting a problem like this. Don’t just do it once or twice but do it many times just to make sure that there is indeed a problem with the powering on of the phone.
Step 2: Remove the battery and hold the Power button
Yes, I’m serious. Actually, somebody told me I was a fool when he saw me pull the battery out of his phone and hit the power button. He said, there is no way I can turn the phone on without the battery. That’s true, but we’re not actually trying to power on the phone at this point. Rather, we’re trying to drain electricity stored in electronic components inside the phone. After this, place the battery back and hit the power button again. If the phone stays dead after that, proceed to the next step.
Step 3: Boot to Safe Mode
To rule out the possibility of a third-party application preventing the phone from booting up normally, you need to boot it to Safe Mode. It will run on pre-loaded apps and nothing else. So, if it were an app causing the problem, you would know by doing this.
- Press and hold the Power button.
- Immediately after the Samsung Galaxy S3 screen appears, release the Power button then press and hold the Volume Down key.
- The phone would restart and the Safe Mode text will be visible in the lower-left corner of the screen.
Consider yourself lucky if you can go this far. If this is the case, then you can commence the search for the rogue app and uninstall it. Start your search from the most recent installation. The rule of thumb is to disable suspected apps first and attempt to boot normally. The problem has already been fixed at this point.
In case you cannot boot to Safe Mode, proceed with the next step.
Step 4: Boot to Recovery Mode and wipe cache partition
Booting to Recovery Mode can be already be considered a desperate measure yet it is not a guarantee you can fix the problem. In fact, there is no guarantee you can even boot to this mode. But try to follow these steps:
- Press and hold the Volume Up, Home, and Power buttons.
- When the phone vibrates, release the Power button but continue holding the other two until Android System Recovery screen appears.
- Use the Volume Down button to highlight ‘wipe cache partition’ and press the Power button to select it.
- The phone will reboot automatically after the cache partition was wiped out.
At this point, if you can’t boot to Recovery Mode no matter how much you tried, then we have already narrowed down the problem. It’s either your battery is totally busted or your phone’s Power switch has a problem.
Step 5: Try a different or new battery
Borrow from a friend or just buy a new battery so you can test if it was really the battery that caused the problem. If you bought a new one and you found out it wasn’t the battery, at least, you now have a spare. Of course, make sure the battery is compatible with the Galaxy S3 and make it a point to fully-charge before using it. If your phone powers on after a battery swap, then problem solved.
Step 6: Seek help from a technician
In case you’ve tried a different battery and the phone still refuses to turn on, it’s time you brought it back to the store or to a shop where it can be physically check thoroughly. If proven defective by a technician, a replacement unit may be provided for you of it could be repaired. I have a suspicion it’s a Power switch issue especially if the phone don’t respond when you pressed it.
I hope this helps.
I’ve tried all of this, as well as the infamous jig method. The most activity I can get out of my phone is plugging it in (USB) to my computer w/o a battery. Then, the LED turns red. It goes away after a few seconds, whether I put in my battery or not.
I tried purchasing a $3 jig that is suppose to force it in to download mode, and that may work for semi-responsive phones, but not for this device.
I have my S3 since last June. From beginning, it turns off automatically from time to time, once a week or 2 a day. When, it happens, I just hold down the power button for over 10 seconds and release and hold down again until it vibrates, then it starts booting. However, this morning, it refuses to start up. If the battery is on, and I hold down the power button, it vibrates quick every few seconds, but no booting sign at all. I tried all the suggestions here, but nothing works.
I tried literally every tip out there, then I got frustrated and started to hit power button repeatedly like 50 times, and it started!
thank you so much my s3 turned on after step 2
amazing!! got to the bit where i take out the battery and hold the power button and after replacing the battery and holding the power button it turned on!! thank you so much!
I tried all of this but my phone still wont turn on 🙁
I’ve had a Galaxy 1 now a Galaxy 3. The first Galaxy 3 would no longer charge after 18 months. I’ve been paying a warranty so Tmobile sent me a “new” phone, no questions asked. This phone worked fine for a few weeks, then froze one day. I got it back on but after that it would turn itself off. I finally deleted all apps (145 of them) but a few of my original ones that have never caused any problems. The phone stopped turning itself off, but I didn’t trust it anymore. Call Tmobile and asked for a *new* one not a refurished one. The guy claimed there were no more new ones and it would take a week to get another. Shortly after, a shipment was made of what I assume is supposed to be a new one. Loaded it back up. Turned it off. And now it goes through the whole cycle of starting up (i.e. vibrates, Samsung log, Samsung Galaxy SIII logo, blue circle with Samsung logo, little android rocket, Samsung logo, and then stuck on Samsung), blue light is on as well. No problem with the power button as it will start the rebooting cycle and freeze. I’ve tried troubleshooting by powering on (6-7 times); removing the battery and pressing power button to discharge, then powering on; and each of the steps you’ve outlined above and all it does is go through the same powering on cycle and then freezes. I’m not home where I have extra batteries (but this morning it showed fully charge). The next step is stopping off at a Tmobile store, but I don’t have high hopes. Meanwhile, I have the old glitchy phone sitting in the box (which I’ve already sealed) waiting to be shipped off. Oh and to add insult to injury, they forgot to give me a prepaid shipping label and are now sending me reminders to get the phone back to them in 7 days or they are going to charge me for this brick.
Most likely this is a SDS (Sudden Death Syndrome), because of a malfunctioning chip in the phone. Yes, this is Samsung’s fault, and if you are still in warranty, then you are extremely lucky. Took me a long time to figure out this. Tried all kinds of troubleshooting steps in vain. I had to finally pay a tech $150 to get the eMMC chip replaced, and the phone worked just fine after that. Someone should start a class-action law suit against Samsung for this!!
I had this problem and actually tried all that, would never boot part the Samsung screen. Finally got the phone to boot by removing the SIM card and booting without. Powered off, reinstalled the SIM and it’s working fine.
Wow! So I wasn’t alone! Good to know lol.
This happened to my S3 two months ago and it took me almost 5hrs to get my phone back on. I figured a way to turn it on by pressing the power button every time the Samsung logo flashed since if I pressed the power button once to turn it on, I was brought to the Samsung galaxy S3 and then it shutdown again. I was able to stay on for a minute before it turned off again but it eventually stayed on for the next few days and goodbye again. The first time I took it to AT&T device support and they reset my phone and it worked fine for a month until it happened again. I was lucky enough to actually get a phone replacement after it happened again!
Still not sure what happened though. Think it might have been the power button for me.