How to fix Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus with black screen and blue light flashing [Troubleshooting Guide]

The term we often call a phone with a black screen and unresponsive is “Black Screen of Death” because the device doesn’t respond when you press the power button or any buttons for that matter. It usually gives the impression that the phone is powered off or has a drained battery and most of the time, that’s not the case.

Another variation of this issue is when there’s a blue light flashing at the top of the screen as if it’s notifying you that you have unread messages or something. Between these two, the latter may give a glimmer of hope considering the fact that it’s still capable of lighting up the notification LED. When you’re experiencing this, you can try calling your number and the phone might ring even if the screen stays black. This is the kind of problem we will tackle in this post so continue reading below as we may be able to help you with this one.

Before anything else though, if you have other issues with your device, then visit our Galaxy S8+ troubleshooting page for we have already addressed several common problems with this phone. Odds are that there are already existing solutions to your problems so just take time finding issues that are similar with yours. If you can’t find one or if you need further assistance, feel free to contact us by completing our Android issues questionnaire. Please provide us with as much information as possible so that it would also be easier for us to troubleshoot the problem. Don’t worry as we offer this service for free, so all you have to do is give us sufficient information about the problem.

How troubleshoot Galaxy S8+ with black screen and flashing blue light

When it comes to a Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus, or any Galaxy device for that matter, that has a black, unresponsive screen with blue light flashing at the top of the screen, we know just a solution. However, if things don’t go according to plan, we have some steps you can try to see if you can make your phone come back to life.

The Solution

Press and hold the Volume Down and Power keys together for 7 to 10 seconds. If the phone boots up normally, problem solved. Otherwise, move on to the troubleshooting steps below but before that, let me explain why this one works.

More often than not, a black screen coupled with a pulsing light is a sign of a system crash. There’s a lot of reasons why your phone crashes but that’s the fact. The best solution to deal with a system crash is to do the Forced Restart and that’s what we did above.

This procedure is equivalent to the battery pull method we often do to phones with removable battery. Apparently, we can’t do that on your S8 Plus because its battery is not user-removable. So, we just have to do the combo of pressing the Volume Down and Power keys for a certain amount of time to simulate battery disconnect. This fixes the problem and allows your phone to boot up successfully.

However, if the phone is still stuck on the black screen and flashing blue light, then here’s what you should do…

Step 1: Try to boot your phone up in safe mode

There’s only so much we can do about a phone that doesn’t turn on and the best thing we can do is try some things to see if there’s still a chance that this problem will be fixed. So, the first thing I want you to do about it is to run it in safe mode, which temporarily disables all third-party apps and services.

We have seen cases wherein third-party apps caused devices to freeze up and won’t respond and if that’s the case with your Galaxy S8 Plus, then you should be able to boot it up normally 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.

Assuming you were able to boot your phone up in safe mode successfully, the next thing you should do is try to reboot it to see if you can make it work in normal mode. If it’s still stuck in black screen, at least, you now know that it still works in safe mode. This rules out the possibility that the problem is due to a hardware problem. You should try to look for apps that cause the problem and then uninstall them one by one and every time you do that, try to reboot your phone in normal mode. Here’s how you uninstall an app from your Galaxy S8 Plus…

1. From the Home screen, swipe up on an empty spot to open the Apps tray.
2. Tap Settings > Apps.
3. Tap the desired application in the default list or tap 3 dots icon > Show system apps to display pre-installed apps.
4. Tap the desired application.
5. Tap Uninstall.
6. Tap Uninstall again to confirm.

If you can’t find the app that’s causing the problem, then it’s better and quicker to just make a backup of your important files and data and then just reset your phone.

1. From the Home screen, swipe up on an empty spot to open the Apps tray.
2. Tap Settings > Cloud and accounts.
3. Tap Backup and restore.
4. If desired, tap Back up my data to move the slider to ON or OFF.
5. If desired, tap Restore to move the slider to ON or OFF.
6. Tap the back button to the Settings menu and tap General Management > Reset > Factory data reset.
7. Tap Reset.
8. If you have screen lock turned on, enter your credentials.
9. Tap Continue.
10. Tap Delete all.

On the other hand, if your phone still refuses to boot up on safe mode, then you should try the next step.

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• Galaxy S8+ keeps shutting down on its own, screen remains black and won’t turn on, other issues

Step 2: Try booting  your phone up in Recovery Mode

There’s a high probability that you can make your phone run in this mode it’s because the Android System Recovery is the fail-safe of almost all Android devices. Even if your S8+ is suffering from serious firmware issue, it should still be able to boot up in this environment and assuming you’re successful, the first thing you should do is wipe the cache partition. If that won’t work, then you would have to resort to a reset.

How to start your Galaxy S8+ in Recovery Mode and wipe cache partition

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 Android logo displays, release all keys (‘Installing system update’ will show for about 30 – 60 seconds before showing the Android system recovery menu options).
4. Press the Volume down key several times to highlight “wipe cache partition.”
5. Press the Power key to select.
6. Press the Volume down key to highlight “yes” and press the Power key to select.
7. When the wipe cache partition is complete, “Reboot system now” is highlighted.
8. Press the Power key to restart the device.

How to run your S8+ in Recovery mode and do the master reset

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).
4. Press the Volume down key several times to highlight “wipe data / factory reset.
5. Press Power button to select.
6. Press the Volume down key until ‘Yes — delete all user data’ is highlighted.
7. Press Power button to select and start the master reset.
8. When the master reset is complete, “Reboot system now” is highlighted.
9. Press the Power key to restart the device.

If the problem still persists after this procedure, you should now bring it to the shop and let the technician handle the problem for you as it might be a hardware issue.

MUST READ:

• What to do when your Samsung Galaxy S8 shows the Black Screen of Death [Troubleshooting Guide]
• What to do if your new Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus experiences the black screen of death [Troubleshooting Guide]

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