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How to fix Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus that won’t turn on (easy steps)

ByHarold Hisona

After years of providing free support to our readers, we’ve already encountered thousands of issues and we’ve already known several effective solutions to almost every problem sent by our readers including a fix for a Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus that won’t turn on. This issue, while it may seem like a very complicated one, may actually be just a result of a rather minor problem in the firmware. Majority of the owners who encountered this problem said they were able to fix it without any help from a tech.

In this post, I will share with you a solution that worked to a lot of our readers who have phones that died without apparent reason. And our subject will be the Galaxy S8+ since we received several complaints from our readers about it. If you’re one of the owners of this phone and are currently bugged by a similar problem, continue reading as this post may be able to help you.

Before we proceed with our troubleshooting, if you are looking for a solution to a different issue, then visit our troubleshooting page for we have already addressed some of the most common problems with this phone. Browse through the page to find the solution that works best for you. If you still need our help after that, then contact us through our Android issues questionnaire.

Solution for the Galaxy S8 Plus that won’t turn on

I am confident that the following solution will fix the problem but bear in mind that it only works for issues that occurred without apparent reason. If you’re the owner and you know right from the start the problem started after your phone suffered a drop or got submerged in water for a long time, then our solution may not work since the problem has already something to do with the hardware. However, if this issue started out of the blue and you don’t know exactly what happened to it, then you should try this…

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  • Press and hold the Volume Down button and the Power key simultaneously for 10 seconds.

Assuming that there’s enough battery and the hardware is totally fine, your device should boot up normally. This procedure is what we call Forced Restart which refreshes your device’s memory and forces it to boot up, as the name suggests. If this doesn’t work however, then you should try this…

  1. Press and hold the Volume Down button and don’t let go of it.
  2. Press and hold the Power key while holding down the Volume Down.
  3. Keep both keys held for 10 seconds or until the screen turns on.

It’s basically the same as the procedure above but we’re just making sure you’re doing it right. Pressing and holding down the Power key first and then the Volume Down has a different effect as when you do it in reverse; you have to it the latter first before you trigger the phone to power up. But if this doesn’t work either, this is what you’re going to do next…

  1. Plug the charger to a working wall outlet.
  2. Connect your phone to it using the original cable.
  3. Regardless whether the phone shows the charging signs or not, let it charge for at least 10 minutes.
  4. Now do the Forced Restart procedure once again but this time while the phone is charging.

One of these procedures should work and bring your phone back to life provided there’s enough battery and there’s no damage to hardware components. If by any chance your phone stays unresponsive after doing all this, then you have to try troubleshooting it. Continue reading so you’ll be guided how to troubleshoot your S8+ that won’t turn on.

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Troubleshooting Galaxy S8 Plus that won’t turn on

There are a few things you can do about this problem but I hope you’ll take time troubleshooting your phone. If you are not comfortable doing the procedures below, then you should bring the phone to the service center immediately so that the tech can take check it for you. For those who are willing to do some troubleshooting, here’s what you should do:

Make sure there’s no physical / liquid damage

It’s imperative that you check your phone for both physical and liquid damage first because if the problem is due to one of those things, it’s futile to troubleshoot your device knowing the issue is with the hardware.

For physical damage, just look for scratches, dents and cracks on the outside. A force that can render the phone useless should leave a mark. If the phone is still flawless, then move on to the next step.

For liquid damage, check the USB or charger port first. Look into it to see if there’s a trace of liquid. You may use a cotton swab to clean around the area or insert a small piece of tissue paper into it to absorb the moisture.

Then, remove the SIM card tray and look into the SIM slot and look for the Liquid Damage Indicator; it’s a small sticker that would tell you if the phone has liquid damage or not. If the LDI is still white, then there’s no liquid damage but everything would be totally different if the LDI turned red or purple.

For cases of physical and/or liquid damage, you should bring the phone to the service center for the technician to evaluate how serious the problem is.

Try running the phone in Safe mode

After making sure there’s no physical or liquid damage in your phone, the next thing you should do is try to boot it up in Safe mode. By doing so, you’re temporarily disabling all third-party apps that may have a hand in this problem. Follow these steps and see what happens:

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

Assuming the phone boots up in this mode, then the problem is already fixed since we’ve already powered up the device. Try to reboot it in normal mode without doing anything in safe mode first. If it would still result to a black screen, boot back in safe mode and hunt down the apps that cause the problem and uninstall them one by one.

  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 preinstalled apps.
  4. Tap the desired application.
  5. Tap Uninstall.
  6. Tap Uninstall again to confirm.

However, if the phone still refused to boot up in safe mode, then try the next method.

Attempt to boot the phone up in Recovery mode

The Android system recovery mode is the fail-safe of almost all Android devices. Even if your phone has some serious firmware issues for as long as the integrity of the hardware is intact, it should boot up in this environment. If you can make your phone to run in this mode successfully, there are a couple of things you can do that have great impact on the firmware. So try to go through the methods below and see what works:

How to run 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.

Run phone in Recovery mode and do the Master reset

This is your last resort but as long as the firmware hasn’t been modified in any way, you should be able to fix this problem by doing the reset. But the thing is you would lose all your files and personal data especially those that you saved in your phone’s internal storage. So it’s up to you if you proceed with this method but here’s how you do it:

  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.

I hope that you’d be able to fix the problem with your phone using these methods. If the problem persists after doing all these, then you have to bring it to the tech to have it checked.

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