What to do if Galaxy S9 Plus is water damaged, shows black screen and won’t turn on
Today’s troubleshooting post for the #GalaxyS9 and #GalaxyS9Plus talks about what you can do if your device no longer powers back on after being exposed to water. As many of you know already, the Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus are water-resistant phones. If you’re wondering why we still bother to discuss water damage issue in this post, that’s because water-resistance doesn’t mean the Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus are totally immune to water damage. We say water-resistance in phones are overrated. Try to take a look at one of the cases in this post and see how water resistance can fail.
Problem #1: What to do if Galaxy S9 Plus is water damaged and won’t turn on
So I was in bible study and I forgot my glasses on the couch so I picked up my glasses but root beer had spilled all over my phone including my charging port so I of course started drying it and sticking my toothpick in to get the root beer out and I used a hairdryer but I had it on high and on cold but i had let go of the cool button and the heat I guess touched the heat was to hearse and my phone is not powering on nor charging am. I’m too scared to charge it and i don’t even know if the root beer gone because my phone wont power on and tell me but every time I try to power it on, it shows like a line for like a second then it go off, then when I try to charge it it vibrates but it wont turn on and last time I charged it, I got shocked due to moisture. I’m out of ideas to turn on my phone. Please help my phone. i’m only 12 years old in a huge mistake. By the way I have the S9+. — A.kyabasinga9
Solution: Hi A.kyabasinga9. The Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus are water- or liquid-resistant so it could have handled occasional or accidental liquid splashes. All you need to do if you found your S9 Plus wet, even in the charging port area, is to rinse it gently with clean water, wipe it with clean soft cloth, and let it air dry. Water naturally evaporates in a few hours so leaving your phone in a warm location like near the back of TV should help hasten the process. There’s no need to stick something in the charging port as that can potentially damage seal that keeps water or liquid out, or bend a pin that makes contact with the charging cable. Applying too much heat on the charging port using a hairdryer is not a good idea as that might melt the nano particles that comprise the water seal in the port.
To see if you can fix the issue at your end right now, here are the things that you want to try:
Let the phone air dry. As mentioned above, water will eventually dry out on its own. Because your phone got wet by root beer, you want to ensure that there’s no non-water residue in the charging port. You can do that by rinsing the phone with clean pot water. Make sure to use non-pressurized water to clean the charging port. Once you’re confident that the charging port is cleaned properly of any root beer particles, wipe the phone with a clean towel. Then, you want to shake the phone gently to dislodge water from the charging port. Afterwards, leave the phone near an indirect source of heat. Do not place your S9 near an oven or furnace, or outside where it’s going to be exposed to direct sunlight. Doing so is a sure way of damaging your device. Let the phone dry itself out for at least 8 hours. Afterwards, try turning the phone back on and see if it works, or if it charges normally again.
If you’ll get the moisture detected error after drying the phone for several hours, that means the USB port area is still wet, or there may still be some water particles left. Let the phone dry out for several more hours in normal room temperature before attempting to turn it back on.
Use another set of charging accessories. If your phone no longer show moisture detected error but continues to refuse to charge, the next good thing that you can do is use another charging cable and adapter. If you can’t find an original Samsung charger for your S9, go to a nearby Samsung store and try to borrow their S9 charger. This should help you determine if the problem is being caused by a bad charger or not.
Charge your S9 wirelessly. In case the charging port was damaged when you insert a toothpick in it, you can still continue to charge your device using a wireless charger. Wireless charging is significantly slower than regular cable charging but it’s a good workaround if you encounter a problem with the USB port. It’s also a good temporary alternative if you don’t want to send the phone in for repair right away due to a bad USB port.
Get professional support. If you’ve already tried our suggestions above and your phone still refuses to charge properly or at all, that means your S9 has a hardware issue. To fix it, you need Samsung technician to open it up so a complete hardware diagnostic can be performed. If you did manage to damage the phone with liquid, Samsung will declare the warranty void and you’ll most probably end up paying for the repair. If you want to have a guaranteed fix though, we still recommend that you let Samsung fix the phone for you. While you can definitely send your phone to an independent service center, there’s a chance that they may not be able to repair the phone permanently.
Problem #2: Galaxy S9 shows black screen and refuses to boot up
I have been having issues for weeks of battery going dead just seconds to minutes after being removed from charger and it was burning me to just touch on but mostly off the charger. Then I started getting messages from phone and my connected PC saying blue light filter was not working. Now this is something i have never turned on or messed with because I have a hard enough time seeing the screen without it being dark. Well today I took advice from someone at t-mobile and I cleared the partition cache. Once I hit yes and it was done I tried to get to reboot but phone shut off. When I try to turn it back on into any type of mode it just goes to black screen that says rebooting in top left corner and then shows droid guy. It will just keep doing this over and over. I was able to reach a Samsung support tech threw a chat but all they could tell me is how to get it to shut off by pressing and holding volume down key and power key for 30+ seconds. O and this phone is rooted and originally a Verizon phone but was unlocked to use my carrier. I have already spent so much money and time on this phone and really hate idea of having to spend more because of yet another problem. Please let me know if there is anything at all I can do to save myself an hour drive and more money on this device. Thank you, Mary P.s After reading threw all your troubleshooting I really wish I had found this page first. — Mary Hoke
Solution: Hi Mary. We can’t see any connection between doing a cache partition wipe and your S9 refusing to boot normally afterwards so there must be another factor at play. What that factor is can be anything. The good thing is, you’ll most likely fix the issue on your end since you were able to previously clear the system cache before it became unstable. To do that, do a factory reset and see what happens. Here’s how:
- If possible, back up data on the internal memory. If you have signed into a Samsung account on the device, you have activated Anti-theft and will need your Samsung credentials to finish the master reset. If you can’t create your backup because the phone refuses to power back on normally, you’re out of luck. To proceed, follow the rest of the steps.
- 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.
Should factory reset won’t fix the issue at all, consider unrooting your S9 by flashing stock firmware to it. We presume you know how to do this since you currently have a rooted phone. If you don’t think you can do it, do some research on how to unroot your device. Some root software has their own way of unrooting a device but a universal way to do it is via Odin. Flashing stock firmware to your S9 will basically delete the current software so you’ll also lose your personal data, even if you did skip factory reset above.