Water damage - Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hi. My phone got wet in my jacket pocket while riding my motorbike. It was probably wet for an hour or so before I got home and started attending to it. Obviously as it was in my pocket it didn't get submerged or anything, but i still found water residue inside. I took it apart, submerged the motherboard in isopropyl alcohol for a couple of hours and then left it to dry. Today it is booting up however I have noticed a couple of problems.
The phone will not start up unless it is connected to a power source when I try to start it. It will stay on if i unplug it.
It won't charge. First time I booted it it said 41%. As soon as I restarted it had dropped to 17% and is now falling even when plugged in. It does claim to be charging when connected however.
The front camera looks like one of those face-morphing apps (Is there's water around the lens or something?).
It also feels quite hot around the top of the phone when it isn't doing anything.
The loud speaker is not working (fine, I'm guessing that's just a case of swapping it out).
Could the first two just be the battery or some sort of issue with the USB interface? Any ideas how to fix these issues? Thanks!

Clean your usb port. I sometimes clean it with 99% alcohol and a toothbrush when I got some moister damage.
When you charge it, check battery stats and see if it says that it's usb connected.
If so, then you might need to flash a custom kernel (I used Ktoonz for it) and raise the charging stream true usb.
Because your usb port got wet, it thinks you are charging true usb. When charging true usb it will charge way slower. It's als probably the cause for your phone getting hot for no reason.

Lennyz1988 said:
Clean your usb port. I sometimes clean it with 99% alcohol and a toothbrush when I got some moister damage.
When you charge it, check battery stats and see if it says that it's usb connected.
If so, then you might need to flash a custom kernel (I used Ktoonz for it) and raise the charging stream true usb.
Because your usb port got wet, it thinks you are charging true usb. When charging true usb it will charge way slower. It's als probably the cause for your phone getting hot for no reason.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I will try that now! Any idea why it won't start unless connected? I've just not a new battery, no change on that issue.
EDIT: It's now starting fine. I'm waiting for a replacement USB connector to hopefully fix the charging issues. It's still getting hot when it's just sitting on the table and the battery is draining at light speed.

icedragon999 said:
I will try that now! Any idea why it won't start unless connected? I've just not a new battery, no change on that issue.
EDIT: It's now starting fine. I'm waiting for a replacement USB connector to hopefully fix the charging issues. It's still getting hot when it's just sitting on the table and the battery is draining at light speed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good to hear it's booting again. From my experience these issues are temporarily and will disappear over time. The kernel and changing the charging speed fixed the same issues for me. I'm now running my normal kernel without any tweaks. So you might try it before swapping the connector. But that's up to you.

Lennyz1988 said:
Good to hear it's booting again. From my experience these issues are temporarily and will disappear over time. The kernel and changing the charging speed fixed the same issues for me. I'm now running my normal kernel without any tweaks. So you might try it before swapping the connector. But that's up to you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had already ordered the bits and they were only cheap so went ahead and swapped them out. New USB connector flex and new speaker. Frustratingly I still have no sound. It's charging fine but the battery is still dropping off a cliff (like half an hour from fully charged) and it's still getting hot. I even gave the motherboard and connectors a good clean with high purity alcohol and some cotton swabs. Could the board have suffered permanent damage potentially?
Strangely, none of the water indicator stickers have triggered and it's still in warranty so if worst comes to worst I guess I can go down that avenue.

Related

Battery Not Charging

hey guys, need some help here
so my phone is not charging, i tried the USB to PC, does not work neither does the wall charger, I do not get a orange led notification either. The phone would boot up for a second then turn off.
any suggestions?
I have this issue with my aftermarket battery from china, the battery is so dead that the phone doesnt even really know its there. It just happend to me yesterday. ill put up a fix tomorrow because i have my kid this weekend.
slickerxcuh said:
hey guys, need some help here
so my phone is not charging, i tried the USB to PC, does not work neither does the wall charger, I do not get a orange led notification either. The phone would boot up for a second then turn off.
any suggestions?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
lucky for you, its the ebay battery for me its my oem battery. going to try to swap out another oem battery/charger and see if its my battery.
had the same issue, i noticed on mine that the battery pins on the phone tend to bend easily to prevent a good connection from the battery. phone would power on but wouldn't charge either.
is it the pins? i need some pictures or a video tutorial on this fix lol i have no idea what everyone is talking about, the pins look fine to me. im pretty sure that its my cable now since it didnt charge a blackberry phone either...
Damn how can this phone be so hi tech but made with th most CHEAPEST materials!
i bought a new micro usb cable, and its charging now...
slickerxcuh said:
i bought a new micro usb cable, and its charging now...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I bought one off of amazon and it would totally freak my phone out....no joke...it was just a wall charger no usb...now I only use the usb like the one that came with the phone and that is i.t
When you get a new phone, you should always condition the battery by letting it run completely down a few times in the beginning. When I was doing this with my phone when I first got it, after a complete drain it wouldn't charge. All i had to do was pull the battery and put it back in. Then it started charging fine. Not sure if this helps...
Also I wouldn't say these phone use cheap materials because people are not careful and bend the pins. I've removed my battery several times and the pins are perfect... If the pins aren't flexible, you wouldn't be able to get the battery in. In order to be flexible, they have to be soft. Pay attention when you are removing and replacing your battery.
You ended up figuring it out but I figured it would be good to point out that sometimes the connections on the battery/phone get dirty or pretty much any battery where it connects to the electronic.
What I usually do first when I have problems with any of my electronics turning on/charging is I take a cotton swab and dip it in rubbing alcohol. Shake it off cuz there will be alot of alcohol on there just so its not dripping and rub the connections then flip the cotton swap around then rub them again with the dry side. This doesnt work all the time but works enough for me to mention it. Static electricity will attract dirt and grime. Used to happen semi often on my touch pro since I used to have it in my pocket when I worked on a golf course.
Anyways just my 2 cents.

Completely dead and unresponsive Nexus 4 after voltage spike while charging in car

So yesterday, my old car's voltage regulator went haywire, and blew the car's main fuses after a couple of seconds.
I was charging my N4 during this incident with a cigarette lighter thingy and was holding aprox. 10% batttery charge.
The N4 is now 100% unresponsive. No amount of pressing any key combination for any amount of time does anything at all.
I have also tried charging it with a generic USB charger for a couple of hours, to no effect.
After that, I tried charging it with my computer's USB3 port for a couple of hours. This warmed up the phone a bit on the back, so it seems the ingoing current is doing something in there.
I am not getting a red LED indicator as most other people seem to be getting.
i fear something important was simply fried inside the phone, but I don't want to give up yet!
- Does anyone have any ideas what else I could try out?
- Are there maybe some small fuses inside the N4 that might be burned due to the voltage spike? Could I maybe replace or bridge them?
- could replacing the battery maybe revive the phone? If so, how could I test if getting a replacement battery will be worth it? Maybe temporarily wiring a compatible voltage to board?
http://www.reddit.com/r/nexus4/comments/29gkfj/usb_power_surge_killed_nexus_4/
Does this help?
LooieENG said:
http://www.reddit.com/r/nexus4/comments/29gkfj/usb_power_surge_killed_nexus_4/
Does this help?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cool! I must have missed that the USB charging stuff is on a seperate board when i stepped through the N4 teardown!
Do you know if wireless charging goes through this board, too, or would it be using a separate circuit - i.e. should I head over to a friend's and test if I get SOME reaction from the phone when wirelessly charging?
Also: what worries me is that, as i mentioned, the phone's back is getting quite warm when charging it via USB3, so I am afraid that the charge is actually getting to the battery (vs. being stopped at a burnt fuse)

[Q] Battery Mainboard Solder

So there's lots of questions about bad battery life but haven't found my issue in searches - altho I suspect my issue is a factor for many to some degree.
N4 took a 4' to drop to concrete. Screen cracked. Replaced screen w/no problems. Ran fine for a while on stock 4.4.4. Lollipop comes OTA practically zero day and since the N4 isn't my primary phone I upgrade to play around. Shortly after 5.0, the battery drains and shuts the phone off. I charge it overnight, pull it off, battery is dead, phone shuts down. Will stay on and operate fine on wireless charger but powers down if not connected. Pop off the back again to make sure battery connector is snug and reassemble. Now I've got red light of death. Get Google logo and can boot to recovery options but it just cycles. Disassemble again and ultimately find that the battery pins from the mainboard and their little black housing have come off at some point. Try to solder it back on but there's chips on the back side and there's just no room to get the solder on and pins reconnected. Not w/my skills anyway.
My main question is, has anyone successfully reconnected that annoying mofo? Thinking about skipping the connectors and just soldering wire straight from the battery to the board. I don't see anything in that connector that would be a problem if absent, but any warnings I should know about? Other workarounds?
This is not mission critical, just principle/spite.
Repaired?
gkmocv said:
So there's lots of questions about bad battery life but haven't found my issue in searches - altho I suspect my issue is a factor for many to some degree.
N4 took a 4' to drop to concrete. Screen cracked. Replaced screen w/no problems. Ran fine for a while on stock 4.4.4. Lollipop comes OTA practically zero day and since the N4 isn't my primary phone I upgrade to play around. Shortly after 5.0, the battery drains and shuts the phone off. I charge it overnight, pull it off, battery is dead, phone shuts down. Will stay on and operate fine on wireless charger but powers down if not connected. Pop off the back again to make sure battery connector is snug and reassemble. Now I've got red light of death. Get Google logo and can boot to recovery options but it just cycles. Disassemble again and ultimately find that the battery pins from the mainboard and their little black housing have come off at some point. Try to solder it back on but there's chips on the back side and there's just no room to get the solder on and pins reconnected. Not w/my skills anyway.
My main question is, has anyone successfully reconnected that annoying mofo? Thinking about skipping the connectors and just soldering wire straight from the battery to the board. I don't see anything in that connector that would be a problem if absent, but any warnings I should know about? Other workarounds?
This is not mission critical, just principle/spite.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So were you ever able to get the connector solder back on? I think mine break because it was to hot when I was removing the battery. My nexus 4 shutdown on me, my battery was expanded. I was wondering why my screen was being pushed out. I wonder if Android 5.0.1 is causing phone to run to hot. Never did this with Android 4.4.4. Hope the connector can be fixed. Maybe I take it to a solder shop.
jameswhite4684 said:
So were you ever able to get the connector solder back on? I think mine break because it was to hot when I was removing the battery. My nexus 4 shutdown on me, my battery was expanded. I was wondering why my screen was being pushed out. I wonder if Android 5.0.1 is causing phone to run to hot. Never did this with Android 4.4.4. Hope the connector can be fixed. Maybe I take it to a solder shop.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not yet. I pulled the connector back off and cleaned everything up. I found that even very small gauge solder is too sloppy for the 4 small connections. Not to mention there's chips on the back side so you can't linger too long with heat. So my plan is to try again with some conductive ink and/or gel. If that doesn't work I'm just going to use wires to bridge the battery right to the board. Haven't had time to work on it but I'll follow up here when I do.
Did you get a replacement battery? Lithium batteries can swell because of overcharging. There are definitely more than a few N4 owners who had the same issue. A replacement battery won't solve that problem but it could be more tolerant of it, for a while - and depending on if it was "user error" or a fault in the phone's overcharging protection circuitry. Don't go to the trouble of having someone solder the connector back on with the old battery.

Thinks it's charging, but it isn't

My S5 thinks its chargning, and the stops charging and charges again and so on all the time even though the charging cable isn't plugged in.
I've changed the micro-USB port inside the phone, which didn't fix it. It won't charge through the micro-USB port, it doesn't get recognized as a storage "thing" on the computer either, which it did before. Also, it works charging it wirelessly though. I've also factory resetted it and wiped the cache in the bootloader menu, without that fixing it either. I did get some water on the phone, which came inside the back cover the day before this problem occoured, which probably is the cause of it.
Any suggestions to fixing it? If not I'll buy a new phone.
Thanks in advance
Thoumieux said:
My S5 thinks its chargning, and the stops charging and charges again and so on all the time even though the charging cable isn't plugged in.
I've changed the micro-USB port inside the phone, which didn't fix it. It won't charge through the micro-USB port, it doesn't get recognized as a storage "thing" on the computer either, which it did before. Also, it works charging it wirelessly though. I've also factory resetted it and wiped the cache in the bootloader menu, without that fixing it either. I did get some water on the phone, which came inside the back cover the day before this problem occoured, which probably is the cause of it.
Any suggestions to fixing it? If not I'll buy a new phone.
Thanks in advance
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Should have left it to dry out before using it or putting the battery back in
Try washing it with Isopropyl alcohol and leaving it to dry fully
*Detection* said:
Should have left it to dry out before using it or putting the battery back in
Try washing it with Isopropyl alcohol and leaving it to dry fully
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I did dry in rice, do you mean washing/dunking the entire phone without the LCD and battery?
Thoumieux said:
I did dry in rice, do you mean washing/dunking the entire phone without the LCD and battery?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Clean the board of the phone with the alcohol yea, the alcohol will remove any residue left over from the water that could be causing the problem, and will evaporate off leaving no impurities behind
It's the impurities in the water left behind on the board that cause the problems

How to disable usb port on GS5

My usb port seems to have died the other day. It stopped charging and gives the message about an incompatible charger. I have tried Ll of the suggestions except factory reset. I ordered a Qi charger could and was planning on just wireless charging until I decide what I will replace this one with.
But, today the phone has started popping up a message randomly when I don't have it plugged in. It seems to be keeping it from sleeping and my pocket is vibrating as much as a couple dozen times a minute. Is there a way to disable the port in software since it appears broken?I just need a few weeks worth of life out of it till I get the new device and have everything up and running.
I know this is an old phone, but I thought there might still be some people who might know about lollipop on here. I'm currently rotating batteries since my qi adapter didn't arise before leaving town. But, the constant buzzing is pretty annoying. I can mute the phone to avoid it (I assume) but then I miss all incoming traffic.
So I gather I won't get a response. I'm still crossing my fingers...
I bought a wireless charger and adapter from amazon. It works, but it appears every time the usb cable message occurs, the charging stops. In 6 hours last night it continually toggled from charge to not (turning the screen on). I went from 22% to 35%. Not impressive.
bkenobi69 said:
So I gather I won't get a response. I'm still crossing my fingers...
I bought a wireless charger and adapter from amazon. It works, but it appears every time the usb cable message occurs, the charging stops. In 6 hours last night it continually toggled from charge to not (turning the screen on). I went from 22% to 35%. Not impressive.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe try checking your usb port for foriegn matter/ bent pins before giving up. Ive had that happen on a couple different phones. Made all kinds of havoc. Even a small bit of lint can hold moisture and cause pin shorts
Thanks for the suggestion. I blew the port out with both canned air and my air compressor. I also tried using a tooth pick to scrape the contacts with and without isopropyl alcohol. I read somewhere that slightly bending the pins/center body up can help in case it was pushed down. I didn't see any change when I tried using my plastic screen pry tool.
It appears that the message pops up more when the battery is below 30% for some reason. I have no idea why though.
BlueCyclone said:
Maybe try checking your usb port for foriegn matter/ bent pins before giving up. Ive had that happen on a couple different phones. Made all kinds of havoc. Even a small bit of lint can hold moisture and cause pin shorts
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I ended up changing providers and replaced the phone. I was able to get wireless charging working for the most part. It requires careful alignment of the phone and pad.
I checked for debris and pin damage, but nothing looked problematic. The only thing that helped in any way was using a plastic screw driver to pry up on the port. This did not fix it, but it stopped complaining all the time and made it usable with the Qi charger.

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