Galaxy J5 screen stays black but receives calls, screen flickers when brightness is low

Hello Android fans! Our today’s troubleshooting article addresses some screen problems of the #GalaxyJ5. We hope that this post will help enlighten our community on how to do when faced with screen problems mentioned below.

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.

When describing your issue, please be as detailed as possible so we can easily pinpoint a relevant solution. If you can, kindly include the exact error messages you are getting to give us an idea where to start. If you have already tried some troubleshooting steps before emailing us, make sure to mention them so we can skip them in our answers.

Below are specific topics we’re bringing for you today:

Problem 1: Galaxy J5 screen stays black but still receives calls

My Samsung J5 screen is faulty. It did look like it was corrupted and then when I drained the power from the phone it is now completely black. I believe the touch screen element still works as when I ring it, I know roughly where the slider is to answer, it works. None of the reboot options work as when I turn the phone on I cannot see the Samsung logo. Or android logo or anything. I believe the phone is responsive but the display is knackered. I don’t know what version of Android it is running. — Craigotron

Solution: Hi Craigotron. Try to see if you can turn the screen when the device is booted to alternate modes — Recovery Mode, Download Mode, and Safe Mode (see steps below). If the screen remains black after that, that’s a clear indication that the phone’s monitor may be damaged. Only you knew the history of your device but Galaxy screens are usually durable. Unless the device has been physically impacted, dropped, or exposed to water or elements, a Samsung screen should work for years. The black screen issue you’re experiencing right now must only be caused by malfunctioning monitor. To fix it, the phone must be sent in for repair.

For reference, below are the steps on how to restart the phone to alternate modes:

Boot in Recovery mode:

  1. Charge the phone for at least 30 minutes.
  2. Press and then hold the Home and Volume UP keys, then press and hold the Power key.
  3. When the Samsung Galaxy logo shows on the screen, release the Power key but continue holding the Home and Volume Up keys.
  4. When the Android logo shows, you may release both keys and leave the phone be for about 30 to 60 seconds.
  5. You can either wipe the cache partition or do a factory reset when in this mode.

Boot in Download Mode:

  1. Charge the phone for at least 30 minutes.
  2. Press and then hold the Home and Volume DOWN keys, then press and hold the Power key.
  3. When the Samsung Galaxy logo shows on the screen, release the Power key but continue holding the Home and Volume DOWN keys.
  4. Wait until the Download screen appears.
  5. If you can boot the phone in download mode but not in other modes, that means that your only way out may be to flash a stock or custom firmware.
  6. Use Google to look for a guide on how to do it.

Boot in safe mode:

  1. Charge the phone for at least 30 minutes.
  2. Press and hold the Power button.
  3. Once the Samsung Galaxy logo appears, release the Power key and immediately press and hold the Volume Down button.
  4. Continue holding the button until the phone finishes rebooting.
  5. Once you see the text “Safe mode” at the bottom left corner of the screen, release the Volume Down button.
  6. The only difference of safe mode from normal mode is that the former prevents third party apps from running. If you can boot the phone in safe mode but not in normal mode, uninstall all apps until the issue (that prevents you from booting normally) is eliminated.

Problem 2: Galaxy J5 bottom half screen flickers when brightness is low, received photos appear pixelated

So this happened just a few days ago. I always am conscious about saving battery power because I use the crap out of this thing. But I noticed that whenever I turn it to the lowest brightness setting that the bottom half, and I mean entire half, of the screen turns green and flickers it’s brightness. But only on the bottom half. Now if I turn it up the next touch up, it goes away. However before my screen times out it will flicker and kill out. Which it has never done that before. I am one who usually plays with it in low lit areas so not being able to dim it all the way is really killing me. But I can’t afford to reset the device, I have too much on here to do so, and I read about the developer options trick to use GPU and it had no effect.

I restart and turn off my phone regularly to clear memory and unwanted running applications when it seems to be unable to clear them when you use the task manager. And I can’t say I haven’t dropped this a few times. It hasn’t been enough to affect it before but there’s a possibility I could have. Are there any other things I could try?

Like I said I’m so afraid to lose data doing a reset, honestly I’ve never performed one so I wouldn’t know where to start and how to back up all my stuff. Pictures and stuff is easy but application data and stuff like that, I don’t want to lose.

I use straight talk which is essentially Verizon I believe and I’ve had this phone maybe 2 years? It’s hard to say.

Another issue i’ve found is that when I receive pictures from other phones they come in pixelated and terribly grainy. However my mom has the same phone as me and doesn’t have that problem add well as when I receive pictures from hers they are perfectly fine. My husband had a galaxy before and I received pictures fine throughout the first year when he changed to a droid, his pictures also come in pixelated. If only you could see how awful they come in, they are barely recognizable! Even through a Facebook messenger app they are like that. I don’t understand what could be causing that. Either way if it can’t be fixed I’ll live with it, have been for a while now it’s whatever but I’d really like to find a solution to the screen problem. It’s really bugging me I don’t want something to happen to my phone! :0 please help! — Jackie

Solution: Hi Jackie. The easiest way to determine if the screen has been physically damaged is to watch out for persistent symptom/s. If flickering bottom half occurs regardless of the screen , brightness level, that should tell you that you have a damaged screen. However, if it only occurs at a particular brightness level, such as when you set it to low or very low, the cause is probably software in nature.

This problem is not unique to your phone though as we also observe it happening in other Galaxy S devices such as the S4 and S5 before. Eventhough the problem has been happening for a few years now, albeit in a tiny percentage of Galaxy S devices, Samsung has not issued an official word about it. We don’t know if they’re even aware of the problem at all though some users have reported the problem started occuring on their devices only after installing an update.

The logical explanation that we can think of about this problem may have something to do with how the operating system renders images, which can also be coming from an issue with graphics chip. Because this issue does not happen widely, not a lot of brilliant people out there have tried taking time to examine the problem in detail. We haven’t encountered this problem ourselves in our own devices so we also don’t have a first hand experience with it.

Do a factory reset or revert to previous firmware version

To try to fix the problem, we suggest that you try to remember what you may have done differently and undo it. For example, if the issue occurred coincidentally following an update, you should try to factory reset the device, or revert to the previous firmware version (via flashing). Both of these options will wipe all user data and unsaved app information so you’ll still be forced to create a backup first.

Create a backup of your data

And speaking of backup, we suggest that you use Samsung Smart Switch app. You can install this app in your computer, then connect your phone to your PC to begin data transfer. It’s the most efficient way to create a backup. But while Smart Switch can save your photos, videos, music, etc., it may not be able to save everything. App-specific data like game progress may not be saved at all. Unless an app saves its own data to its own developer-provided cloud service, there’s a chance that you lose some information. For example, if you have a game app that does not support automatic upload of your progress to a remote server, which means that everything is saved in the phone locally, Smart Switch may or may not be able to keep those progress. You’ll have to find it out yourself.

For a complete guide on how to install Smart Switch in your computer and how to use it, you can visit this link.

Grainy MMS and photos

Carriers set a file size limit for photos and videos sent via MMS by automatically compressing files. Unfortunately, compressed files have lower quality than the original file so it can be the reason why you’re receiving pixelated MMS.

However, if the problem also occurs with photos you receive via Facebook Messenger app, which is not restricted to the same file size constraint of MMS, then the problem may be operating system specific. Be sure to do a factory reset to fix it.

  1. Turn off the device.
  2. Press and hold the Volume Up key and the Home key, then press and hold the Power key.
  3. When the device logo screen displays, release only the Power key
  4. 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).
  5. Press the Volume down key several times key to highlight ‘wipe data / factory reset.’
  6. Press Power button to select.
  7. Press the Volume down key until Yes — delete all user data is highlighted.
  8. Press Power button to select and start the master reset.
  9. When the master reset is complete, ‘Reboot system now’ is highlighted.
  10. Press the Power key to restart the device.

 


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