Samsung Galaxy S8 started to show up “moisture detected” warning when connected to charger [Troubleshooting Guide]

Your Samsung Galaxy S8 might be dust and water resistant but it’s not really waterproof. It means that water or any sort of liquid can still find its way into your phone and the most common entry point is the charger or USB port. When this happens, you may get the warning “Moisture has been detected in your charger / USB port” and your phone may not charge no matter how long you connect it to the charger.

In this post, I will walk you through in getting rid of this warning assuming that your phone didn’t suffer from liquid damage. I’ve seen cases wherein this warning pops up due to a glitch in the firmware and this might be the case with your phone but then again, we have to do some troubleshooting procedures first. We will try to rule out every possibility until we can determine what the problem is all about so that we can try to formulate a solution that might just fix this issue for good. Continue reading below as this might help you.

Before we move on to our troubleshooting, if you are looking for a solution to a different problem, then drop by our Galaxy S8 troubleshooting page as we’ve already addressed a lot of issues with this phone. Odds are that we have already provided a solution to your problem so make sure you find issues that are similar with yours and use the solutions we suggested. If they don’t work for you or if you need further assistance, fill up our Android issues questionnaire and hit submit to contact us.

How to troubleshoot Galaxy S8 with moisture detected warning

This troubleshooting guide will be focused more on making sure that the phone didn’t suffer from liquid damage even if it got splashed with or dipped in water but I know a couple of things that you can use to make your Galaxy S8 charge. So, without further adieu, here are the things you should do if you’re getting the “moisture detected” warning…

Step 1: Make sure the charger / USB port is dry

The warning “Moisture has been detected in the charger / USB port” is pretty straightforward and more often than not, that’s really the case. As the owner, you should be the first one to know if your phone got in contact with water one or the other and if it did, then drying the USB port should be the first thing you should do. The same thing goes even if you’re not sure that the phone got wet and here’s how you do it:

Get a small piece of tissue and insert it into the port.
Leave the tissue in the port for a minute or two to absorb moist.

Depending on how wet the port is, you may need to do this a couple more times just to make sure all water residue is absorbed and the connectors are dry.

Step 2: Make sure the charger and the cable are dry as well

It is always imperative you check the charger if it’s wet or not because it’s the one that feeds electricity into your phone. Besides, it’s more dangerous if it’s wet because it’s what you plug into the wall outlet. Look into the port in your charger to see if there’s moist and do the same thing as you did in the first step to dry it up. But assuming it’s dry and no signs of water in the port, then check the USB cable.

I’ve encountered a few cases wherein the “moisture detected” warning shows up even if the phone’s USB port is dry and it was because one end of the cable was wet. You may still be able to do the same thing you did in the first step but when it comes to the smaller end of the cable, it’s better that you use a brush to clean it up. Dip the brush alcohol and gently clean the connectors. After which, allow it to dry off for a minute or two.

Step 3: Make sure the Liquid Damage Indicator isn’t tripped

It is important that you check the Liquid Damage Indicator (LDI) of your phone to confirm that it doesn’t have any sort of liquid damage because if the LDI got tripped, then we don’t suggest you continue your troubleshooting as we may end up damaging your phone even more. Therefore you should first check if water has reached the inside components and here’s how you do it:

Pop the SIM tray out.
Look into the SIM slot and look for a small sticker.
If it’s still white, then your phone is free from liquid damage but if it turned red or pink, then it’s confirmed that the cause of the problem is liquid damage.

If there’s a sign of liquid damage, bring your phone back to the store and have the tech handle the problem for you to avoid further damage. If the LDI, however, remained white, then move on to the next step.

Step 4: Try to bypass the warning to see if the phone charges

This method was shared by one of our readers who claimed that it works for him every single time. Usually when the warning “moisture detected” pops up, your phone won’t charge to prevent further damage and you will be advised to wait until the error won’t show up anymore. However, through this method, you may be able to make your phone charge normally even if the warning pops up and here’s how you do it:

Plug the charger to the wall outlet that works.
Connect your phone to your charger using the original cable.
The warning will then shows up and charging process is halted.
Without disconnecting the phone from the charger, reboot it normally.
After the reboot, your Galaxy S8 may charge with or without the warning.

Of course, you only have to do this method after making sure your phone doesn’t have any signs of liquid damage. If it still won’t charge using this method, then move on to the next step.

Step 5: Reboot your Galaxy S8 in Safe Mode and charge

We often run the phone in safe mode when troubleshooting applications-related issues as all third-party apps will be temporarily disabled while the phone is in that environment. But it appears that the service that handles the warning the pops up when the phone detects there’s moist in the USB port isn’t loaded when in safe mode so the device won’t be getting the warning and it may continue to charge. Assuming there’s no sign of liquid damage, feel free to run your device in this mode and let it fully-charge its battery while in this environment. Here’s how you boot your phone up in safe mode:

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

Step 6: Reset your phone

After charging your phone in safe mode, you may still be getting the warning the moment you start the phone in normal mode and I know how annoying it is. Assuming there’s no liquid damage and the USB port is dry, it’s clear at this point that the problem is with the firmware. So, do your best to make a backup of your important files and data and then reset your phone to give it a fresh start. Prior to the reset, disable the Factory Reset Protection first so that you won’t be locked out:

From the Home screen, swipe up on an empty spot to open the Apps tray.
Tap Settings > Cloud and accounts.
Tap Accounts.
Tap Google.
Tap on your Google ID email address if multiple accounts are setup. If you have multiple accounts setup, you will need to repeat these steps for each account.
Tap 3 dot icon.
Tap Remove account.
Tap REMOVE ACCOUNT.

Then follow these steps to reset your Galaxy S8…

Turn off the device.
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.

So, basically, what we did is made sure there’s no liquid damage in your phone and then we tried to bypass the warning to make your phone charge its battery and at the end, we did the reset to correct the problem. I hope this troubleshooting guide can help you.

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