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Help Samsung Galaxy S4 not starting. (details inside)

Elsneg

Lurker
Dec 6, 2014
2
0
Today it was working just fine and at one point it just died (It was still on 13% battery).

I'm not gonna lie, i dropped it and the screen cracked a while ago, but it didn't seem to have an effect. I tried taking out the battery, the sd card etc.etc.

When i try to turn it on, it plays the start-up melody and then the blue light lights up for a bit and then just dies.
Then when i try to turn it on again, part of the screen just flashes for half of a second and then it goes dark.

this process resets if i take out the battery and put it back in..



What do i do :p?
 
Today it was working just fine and at one point it just died (It was still on 13% battery).

I'm not gonna lie, i dropped it and the screen cracked a while ago, but it didn't seem to have an effect. I tried taking out the battery, the sd card etc.etc.

When i try to turn it on, it plays the start-up melody and then the blue light lights up for a bit and then just dies.
Then when i try to turn it on again, part of the screen just flashes for half of a second and then it goes dark.

this process resets if i take out the battery and put it back in..



What do i do :p?
You are the third person on various forums reporting the same issue recently. I had my S4 (not rooted, stock rom) on my dock streaming google music. A phone call came in and the phone started vibrating like crazy and wouldn't stop. The screen shut off and the phone was still vibrating. Finally it stopped and was shut off. When I try to start it a few things happens. It will sometimes boot to my lock screen and the screen goes black and I think it is powered off. Sometimes it will get past the lock screen and then die shortly after. After like 2 or 3 times of that it won't even boot. It loads the Samsung screen but never gets to the Sprint screen or boots. If I leave it for some time shut off with battery out it will go back to booting to the lock screen then dying etc... Recovery mode and download mode can stay on forever without shutting down. I wiped the entire phone, used ODIN to flash most recent stock rom, and the phone rebooted and worked for a time. A few hours later it started random reboots every 10 mins or so. Now it is back to instant crashing and rebooting. Any idea what could be the issue? I'm assuming at this point it is hardware related however why can recovery and download mode run consistently without crashing but when an os is fired up it has issues? If it was a hardware issue shouldn't it not work across the board? Are there any recovery utilities I can try to do hardware diagnostics?
 
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So things were going well for awhile and then the reboot loops started up again. I did some digging and read that apparently Samsung phones are notorious for sticking power buttons and the symptoms were exactly what I was experiencing. I watched some videos online how to open the phone and clean out the power button but it didn't make a difference. I then read that squeezing the connector for the power button with a pair of pliers sometimes does the trick. Not for me. So finally since I'm not under warranty, have no insurance, and the phone wasn't working anyway, I just ripped the white plastic part of the power button right off. Well, that seemed to do the trick. Phone immediately fired back up without issue and has been going strong. I glued a small thin piece of plastic where the old one used to be and I am back in action. If my little plastic piece solution eventually fails or breaks off I will consider soldering on a new button but so far so good.

If you have tried everything else, and are looking for last resort, try cleaning the power button with some alcohol, and if that fails, rip off that power button! Here is the video that gave me the idea:
and here are some other power button videos: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=s4 power button&search_type=&aq=f&oq=
 
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