How to fix Galaxy S8 moisture detected error, water damaged hardware?

Hello and welcome to today’s #GalaxyS8 troubleshooting article. This post will try to answer some of the common issues that affects a lot of S8 users — water damage, moisture detected errors, and failure to boot up.

Problem #1: Will Samsung repair a water damaged Galaxy S8?

Hi. I have a Galaxy S8 and it has water damage. I took it into my pool (I know, foolish of me) and it turned off almost automatically. The screen is unresponsive and stays black. There is a red LED that keeps flashing and the flashlight is in a constant strobe light setting it seems like. I have it in rice right now, but I don’t know what else to do. I do not have insurance on the phone either, would samsung still repair it? — Jack

Solution: Hi Jack. The Galaxy S8 has water resistance protection so a quick, shallow dive in a pool should be okay. The only instances that you don’t want to intentionally dunk your phone in water are the following:

if the phone has been accidentally dropped before
if there are visible cracks in the screen or body of the device
if the phone’s hardware has been previously tampered before (if it’s been repaired)

Samsung’s water resistance is overrated and there had been many cases in the past that even brand new devices out of the box will fail if soaked in water within IP6’s limit (of up to 1.5m for 30 mins). In other words, water resistance protection sometimes is not 100% reliable. That’s why, as much as possible you don’t want to bring your device with you while swimming or diving in a pool or in the ocean.

If your S8 was normally working before it took a dive, then you’re right — it definitely has water damage.

Samsung treats water damage as customer misuse, which automatically voids the standard warranty. They won’t repair your S8 for free, even if it’s still within the standard warranty period of one year. If you want them to repair it for you, you must shoulder the repair fee and almost certainly the cost parts replacement as well. Depending on what parts were damaged, you’ll most likely spend upwards of $200 for Samsung repair. This is a conservative estimate and the total repair cost can easily balloon way high especially if there’s a problem with the motherboard as well. To get an accurate estimate, we suggest that you bring the device to Samsung so they can examine the hardware.

Problem #2: How to fix Galaxy S8 moisture detected error

For about the past week, on and off my phone will notify me saying android has detected moisture in the charging port. The problem is i have never used the water resistant feature for pictures etc and it has never been put in water or had water in it so i was wondering what do i do. — Specialkkellermann

Solution: Hi Specialkkellermann. Moisture detected error can show up due to a number of reasons. Let’s discuss them briefly and the possible solutions that you can try.

Moisture detected error due to traces of liquid or water in the charging port

The Galaxy S8 has a liquid sensor in the charging port designed to prevent charging and warn the user that the port is wet. This is the primary reason for most moisture detected cases reported to us. To ensure that there’s no tiny amount of water or liquid in the charging port, leave your phone near a warm area in your house for the entire day. Water naturally evaporates on its own after some time. Place your phone near an indirect source of heat like the back of a computer tower or TV for at least 12 hours. DO NOT expose the device to direct sunlight or place it near an oven or furnace. Remember, your goal here is to get rid of possible small amounts of liquid or water and not to boil something up.

Also, do not use anything that might push water or liquid inside your phone further such as a hair dryer or can of compressed air.

Moisture detected error due to software bug

Last year, we saw an abnormal rise in number of moisture detected cases for the S8 after a software update. Many users reported that their phone kept showing the error even though they haven’t been near water or exposed to liquid. The problem coincided with the latest Android update at the time so we easily correlated the two. We don’t know if the problem has resurfaced but at this time, you’re the first case that reached out to us regarding this error. In order to cover for a possible software issue though, we recommend that you factory reset the device and see what happens afterwards. Here’s how to do that:

Create a backup of your files and other data.
Turn off the device. This is important. If you can’t turn it off, you’ll never be able to boot to Recovery Mode. If you are not able to shut the device off regularly via the Power button, wait until the phone’s battery is drained. Then, charge the phone for 30 minutes before booting to Recovery Mode.
Press and hold the Volume Up key and the Bixby key, then press and hold the Power key.
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).
Press the Volume down key several times to highlight ‘wipe data / factory reset’.
Press Power button to select.
Press the Volume down key until ‘Yes — delete all user data’ is highlighted.
Press Power button to select and start the master reset.
When the master reset is complete, ‘Reboot system now’ is highlighted.
Press the Power key to restart the device.
Check for the problem.

Moisture detected error due to broken charging accessories

Some rare cases of moisture detected errors were caused by faulty charging cable and/or adapter. Make sure that you have good working charging accessories before charging your phone. To test if the error is due to bad charger or cable, borrow a know official charger for the S8 and use it to charge your S8. If you have the chance to visit a Samsung store, try to use their S8 charger and see if that will fix the problem.

Moisture detected error due to bad charging port

It’s not easy to know if the reason for moisture detected error is being caused by a charging port but this is one of the common causes of this problem. It’s usually a Samsung technician that should test this one out so don’t attempt to open the phone just to see how the charging port appears.

Moisture detected error due to unknown hardware malfunction

Some other hardware malfunction that might result to moisture detected error includes a bad battery, bad Power Management IC, or some other motherboard failure. If nothing works after doing all our suggestions above, then you can assume that there’s hardware failure behind the trouble. In this case, you’ll need to send your phone to Samsung for repair.

Problem #3: Galaxy S8 won’t turn on and stuck on red Verizon logo screen

Heya. I have a Samsung Galaxy S8. Saturday i woke up and my phone had restarted itself and was stuck on the verizon red screen. I had had this happen to me 5 months earlier and I had to factory reset and then things were back to normal. This time I attempted to try restarting it normally as well as reboot in safe mode. Alas, this did not work and still got stuck on verizon red screen. So then I bit the bullet and said i’ll do a factory reset. I did, and it still gets stuck on verizon red screen. I have factory reset it twice more afterwards to make sure all apps were deleted along with everything else, and it still gets stuck on the verizon red screen. Any ideas on whats wrong or how to fix this, or is it time to get a new phone ???\_( ‘_’ )_/ Cheers. — Alexa Alexa

Solution: Hi Alexa. If multiple factory resets via Recovery Menu did not fix the problem, your phone’s bootloader may had become corrupted for some reason. You can try to reflash it but it’s there’s no guarantee that it will work afterwards. Flashing the bootloader is usually only recommended for advanced Android users. We don’t recommend that you try it if you haven’t heard of it, or if you’re not confident to do it at all. Flashing can potentially damage the software for good so you may end up with a paperweight afterwards.

Below are the general steps on how to flash a bootloader in a Samsung device. Exact steps may be slightly different for your particular phone model.

Look for the correct firmware for your phone model and download it. Make sure that you select the right one. It should be the same exact firmware that ran previously on your device. We assume that you list down the firmware version somewhere. If you did not take note of it before, there’s a chance that you may pick the wrong one. As you may know now, using an incorrect firmware can cause complications so good luck with that.
Let’s now say that you have identified the correct firmware. You then want to download it to your computer. The firmware file should have a bunch of files in it like AP_, BL_, CSC_, etc.
Look for the file that starts with a label BL; this should be the corresponding bootloader file for this firmware. Once you’ve identified the bootloader file, copy it to your computer’s desktop or to any other folder that you can easily access.
Proceed with the rest of the flashing procedure using the Odin program.
In Odin, click on the BL tab and make sure to use the bootloader file you’ve identified earlier.
Now, make sure that the “Device Added” status and its “ID:COM box” has turned blue before hitting the START button. This will initiate the flashing of your phone’s bootloader.
Restart the phone once the procedure is finished.

Samsung repair

The best solution that we can tell you in this case is to send your phone to Samsung. If the cause of the problem is misconfigured or corrupted software, they may be able to easily fix your S8 by reflashing stock firmware to it. If it can’t be fixed by a software solution, they wil most likely replace it with another S8.