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How to fix Samsung Galaxy A7 black screen of death issue [Troubleshooting Guide]

ByHarold Hisona

Some of our readers who own the Samsung Galaxy A7 have contacted us regarding the so-called black screen of death. This problem is often characterized by a black and unresponsive screen, hence the name. It leaves an impression that the phone is powered down and won’t turn on but more often, the device is actually powered on but still not responsive.

There is however, one characteristic that you immediately have to look into to know how serious the problem could be and that would be the LED indicator. There are BSOD cases wherein the phone would flash a blue light at the top of the screen as if the phone has some unread notifications or messages. There are also cases wherein it’s just the black screen and no other. I will briefly explain the difference between these two.

Before we proceed, if you are looking for a solution to a different problem, visit our Galaxy A7 troubleshooting page for we have already addressed some of the most common issues with this phone. If even you need more help from us, then feel free to contact us by filling up this form.

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Troubleshooting Galaxy A7 with black screen of death

If your phone has a black screen and there’s a blue light that keeps flashing at the top of the screen, it’s more likely just a system crash. Fortunately, this problem can easily be fixed. However, if it’s all just black screen and there are no other signs of life, then you might be dealing with a power-related issue, which is a bit more complicated to fix. Regardless what the case maybe, here’s what I suggest you do about it…

Perform the Forced Restart procedure

It is imperative that you begin your troubleshooting with this procedure. It’s very easy and safe to do yet very effective in dealing with issues that have something to do with the firmware. In case you don’t know yet, system crashes happen more often than you think and the black screen of death is often the most common symptom of this problem.

When it happens, your phone won’t respond to whatever you do with it. A few years ago, we usually just pull the battery out to “power shock” the phone but that’s not possible now since your Galaxy A7 doesn’t have a removable battery. There’s a procedure that offers the same effect and that’s the Forced Restart; you just got to press and hold both the volume down and the power keys together for 10 seconds and your device may reboot normally. That’s the end of the problem and you haven’t lost anything from your phone.

Try charging your phone

If the Forced Restart procedure failed to bring the phone back to life, then the next thing you must do is make sure there’s enough battery to power up all your phone’s components. Plug the AC adapter to a working wall outlet and then connect your phone using the original USB cable. I would assume you’re using the original charger and cable that came with the main unit.

Aside from ruling out the possibility that your phone has just drained its battery, charging your device will also give you a clearer perspective if it’s suffering from a serious hardware problem because if so, your phone may fail to charge.

Usually, when you plug the charger in, your phone would show on its screen the charging icon and the LED indicator may light up. If none of these charging signs show, then it could already be a sign of a hardware problem but to make our troubleshooting more thorough, try doing the forced reboot procedure again but this time while the phone is connected to its charger.

Verify there’s no liquid damage

It is important that you are very sure your phone isn’t suffering from liquid damage. There are things you need to do to know if water caused your phone to not turn on. Assuming your device has some liquid damage and you just turned a blind eye about it, then it’s very much possible your phone won’t be able to turn on anymore. As you know, water and electricity don’t mix and if an electronic device is submerged in water, a lot of bad things could happen. So, to verify that your phone doesn’t have liquid damage, try doing these things…

  • Clean the USB port using a cotton swab or insert a small piece of tissue into it so that the moisture will be absorbed.
  • You may also blow into the port or give it a blast of compressed air to get rid of debris or lint.
  • Also check the Liquid Damage Indicator which can be found inside the SIM card slot. Remove the SIM tray first and look into the slot. If the LDI is still white, then your phone is clear of liquid damage. But if the LDI turned to red, pink or purple, it’s a different story.

Try starting it up in Safe mode

Assuming there’s no sign of liquid damage whatsoever and your phone still remains unresponsive, you should try turning it up in Safe mode. This will temporarily disable all third-party and if one of them is causing the problem, then your phone should be able to boot up in this mode without any problem.

This is how to start your device in safe mode:

  1. Turn the device off.
  2. Press and hold the Power key past the model name screen.
  3. When “SAMSUNG” appears on the screen, release the Power key.
  4. Immediately after releasing the Power key, press and hold the Volume down key.
  5. Continue to hold the Volume down key until the device finishes restarting.
  6. Safe mode will display in the bottom left corner of the screen.
  7. Release the Volume down key when you see Safe Mode.

The moment your phone starts up successfully in this mode, the problem is already halfway to being solved. The next thing you should do is find the culprit and then uninstall it. You may then try rebooting your phone to normal mode to see if it works this time. You may have to uninstall more than one app to fix this problem. However, if your Galaxy A7 still refuses to power up even in this mode, then do the next procedure.

Try booting it up in Recovery mode

The Android system recovery menu also known as Recovery mode is actually the fail-safe of almost all Android devices. It powers up all hardware components but the interface won’t be loaded. If you can successfully bring your phone to boot up in this mode, then you can do a couple of things that might help fix the problem. The first thing would be to wipe the cache partition to delete and replace all system caches. If that doesn’t work then you have to do the Master reset which will bring the device back to its default settings. This is how you start it up in recovery mode:

  1. Turn off the device.
  2. Press and hold the Volume Up key and the Bixby key, then press and hold the Power key.
  3. When the green Android logo displays, release all keys (‘Installing system update’ will show for about 30 – 60 seconds before showing the Android system recovery menu options).

You then have to follow on-screen instructions to wipe the cache partition or do the master reset. If the screen remains blank after doing all these things, then you have no other choice but to get the phone checked by a technician. As far as basic troubleshooting it concerned, you’ve already done what you can. Now it’s time that you let the professional handle the problem for you.

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