How to recover data from a Galaxy Note8 that won’t turn on

The topic in this article is one of the common questions for many Android users all the time. With a lot of Android devices failing prematurely, those who don’t regularly create a backup of important files are usually left with no choice but to accept the fact that their data are gone. In this short article, we try to educate a Galaxy Note8 user on what he can do to possibly save his data from his device that won’t boot up.

Problem: How to recover data from a Galaxy Note8 that won’t turn on

Hi,  In February of 2018, my Samsung Galaxy Note8 just stopped working one day. On troubleshooting the phone when I got home, I noticed that it was turning on and going into a sort of boot loop. I forgot about it and got a new phone as my post paid plan had run out in December of 2017 and I had decided to pay monthly for a sim only plan. I got my old phone out today after remembering that there are a number of photos on it that I would like to send to my new phone and after plugging it into an outlet, it is still doing the boot loop thing. The details for the boot loop are as follows:

 

  • On being plugged into an outlet, the phone will show the “SAMSUNG Galaxy Note8  … POWERED BY ANDROID” screen. To add to this, there are faint blue broken horizontal lines that run across the entire screen. These are not as noticeable over the text and appear as broken pixels.
  • The phone will present this screen for 4 seconds, followed by it dropping out to a black screen for 4 seconds. It will do this continuously as long as it is on charge.
  • The phone remains responsive in this manner for about 2 minutes after disconnected from a power source. After this, it is unresponsive to any attempts to interact with it.
  • I have tried 4 methods to fix it and they have all failed. 1. Held down the power key for 60 seconds — No change in behaviour at all 2. Held down the power key and volume down key for 60 seconds — No change in behaviour at all 3. Held down the power key and volume up key for 60 seconds — No change in behaviour at all 4. Held down the power key, volume up key and home button for 60 seconds — no change in behaviour.

 

I cannot connect the phone to my computer as it is not technically on. It does not get past the aforementioned screen. Is there anything you can suggest?  Thanks and regards.

Solution: These particular hardware button combinations that you see in the web for this device only work for certain situations. If your Note8 continues remains dead, unresponsive, or stays in the same disposition, that means there may not be a software solution for the problem. For instance, if you turn off the phone (this is important) and proceed to try to boot it to Recovery Mode (by pressing Volume Up key, Bixby key, and holding the Power key) but nothing happens, your phone is most probably dead. Or there can be other reasons why it’s ignoring these hardware button inputs.

We don’t know the full history of your device so we can’t tell you what is happening right now but there’s one clear thing that you need to do if you want to fix it — let a professional check it. We are not optimistic on you ever fixing this phone at all since it has become unbootable at all. If it boots to Recovery Mode or Download Mode, then there’s a chance that the issue may be caused by a software glitch or bug. You can then try to master reset or flash it to see if works normally again. At this time, the main issue is making the device respond and boot up. It does not do that at all so there must be a hardware malfunction that blocks it from turning back on.

If you’re lucky and the main reason for the problem is a bad battery, replacing it might fix the issue for good. But since removing the battery of the Note8 is borderline impossible for average users, we still recommend that you let a technician do it for you. The battery for this device is soldered to the motherboard so you’ll need some basic repair kits to take it out. And then there’s the task of checking if the battery is dead or not. If you don’t have some basic knowledge on phone repair and electronics, you may not be able to do this basic battery check. You also need to have the right tools in order to open the phone up, remove and reconnect the battery afterwards. Sure, you can follow a do-it-yourself video in YouTube for this but it takes more than following instructions if you commit an error while doing it. We highly recommend that let a person who does phone repair for a living do the job for you.

Data recovery from a dead Galaxy Note8

Unless you can manage to power on the device, data that are left in the phone are good as gone. You can’t just remove the internal storage from the motherboard and put in another board to extract the data. For data security, internal storage devices are “married” to the original motherboard it comes with. A lot of Android users think that they can simply put the memory chip to another board and voila, their files are accessible again. Unfortunately, Android devices don’t work that way so you need to ensure that your phone turns on first before you can see if there’s a way to access your data again.

 


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