What to do if your Galaxy Note8 screen went black and won’t turn on

Do you have #GalaxyNote8 with a black screen issue? Today’s troubleshooting article should help. Be sure to follow our suggestions below to fix the problem.

Today’s problem: What to do if your Galaxy Note8 screen went black and won’t turn on

Hello, I have an Android Galaxy Note8. Today my screen went black, with a blue-flashing light that appears occasionally on the screen. I tried soft-resetting it by hitting the Power and Volume down buttons at the same time…and the blue dot appears in the upper left hand hand corner of the device, and I hear the start up noise. When I try hitting the screen, it vibrates and makes sound… indicating that the phone is turned on, but the screen is still black. My phone is now currently charging. I have a lot of sensitive material on this device that needs backing up, so I don’t want to do a hard reset in the event that that would wipe out all memory on my phone. What should I do? — Max

Solution: Hi Max. You’re right. The blue LED light and vibration are indicators that your phone is not powered off. The problem is most likely found on the screen assembly only. To see if this is a temporary software glitch, we suggest that you force restart the phone. Here’s how to do that:

1. Press and hold the Power + Volume Down buttons for approximately 10 seconds or until the device power cycles. Allow several seconds for the Maintenance Boot Mode screen to appear.
2. From the Maintenance Boot Mode screen, select Normal Boot. You can use the volume buttons to cycle through the available options and the lower left button (below the volume buttons) to select. Wait for up to 90 seconds for the reset to complete.

Should force reboot won’t fix the screen problem, you can then try to see if you can make it to work by restarting the phone to safe mode. This should help you see if there’s a third party app preventing the screen from working properly.

1. Turn the device off. This is important. You won’t be able to boot your device to safe mode unless the phone is powered off first. If you can’t powered down the device, wait until it drains the battery, charge it for 30 minutes, then do the button combinations below.
2. Press and hold the Power key past the model name screen.
3. When “SAMSUNG” appears on the screen, release the Power key.
4. Immediately after releasing the Power key, press and hold the Volume down key.
5. Continue to hold the Volume down key until the device finishes restarting.
6. Safe mode will display in the bottom left corner of the screen.
7. Release the Volume down key when you see Safe Mode.

If your screen works in safe mode, that’s concrete proof that you have a third party app issue. To identify which of your apps is causing the trouble, you should boot the phone back to safe mode and follow these steps:

1. Boot to safe mode.
2. Check for the problem.
3. Once you’ve confirmed that a third party app is to blame, you can start uninstalling apps individually. We suggest that you begin with the most recent ones you added.
4. After you uninstall an app, restart the phone to normal mode and check for the problem.
5. If your S9 is still problematic, repeat steps 1-4.

Try booting the phone to alternate boot modes

If the screen stays black when attempting to boot to safe mode, you can also try to reboot the phone to other modes — Recover Mode and Odin Mode. Restarting your Note8 to these modes is not a solution but rather a way to see if the screen is totally dead or not. Sure, you can try to wipe the cache partition and/or do a factory reset on Recovery Mode but in order to do any of them, you need to have a working screen. Your primary goal here is to test the system. If the screen works on any of these modes but not in normal mode, that means that the problem must be software-related. Otherwise, you’re out of luck and you’ll have to send the phone in for repair.

To boot your Note8 to Recovery Mode:

1. Turn the device off. This is important. You won’t be able to boot your device to safe mode unless the phone is powered off first. If you can’t powered down the device, wait until it drains the battery, charge it for 30 minutes, then do the button combinations below.
2. Press and hold the Volume Up key and the Bixby key, then press and hold the Power key.
3. 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). If the screen works and you can reach Recovery Mode, try wiping the cache partition first. If that won’t work, do a factory reset.

To boot your Note8 to Download or Odin Mode:

1. Turn the device off. This is important. You won’t be able to boot your device to safe mode unless the phone is powered off first. If you can’t powered down the device, wait until it drains the battery, charge it for 30 minutes, then do the button combinations below.
2. Press and hold the Volume Down key and the Bixby key, then press and hold the Power key.
3. After the Samsung phone name logo, you will see a screen with a warning sign as shown below. Proceed ahead by pressing the Volume Up button. If you reach this stage, that means that your device’s operating system must be corrupted. Let Samsung reflash the firmware for you.

Get professional help

There’s 99% chance that the reason why the screen stays black at this point is due to bad hardware. This usually happens if you dropped the device or got it wet before. In our experience, Samsung Galaxy devices have reliable screen assemblies and most of the time, they can only fail if a user does not take care of it. Whether or not your phone was physically damaged, if all our suggestions above won’t work, you should let Samsung repair the phone for you.

For your unsaved data, you can forget about them in this case since the phone will be wiped by Samsung during repair. With the screen not turning on, there’s no way to gain access to your phone’s internal storage device.

If your data are really important, you can opt to let an independent service center replace the screen for you so you can explicitly tell them not to wipe the phone during repair. Letting third party technician do this job will obviously not be free and run the risks of unguaranteed result so it’s your call.

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