Samsung Galaxy S5 Troubleshooting

Your phone will not boot

Your battery may require a little extra force when inserting it to make sure all the pins on the battery are making contact with the phone. Without proper contact the phone will not receive power.

Even when the phone is not being used it still sips power waiting for phone calls or text messages. Your battery could have died, this can be remedied by using the included charging cable, or swapping out the battery with a charged one.

Although the Galaxy S5 is water resistant, it is not meant to be submerged in water for long periods of time. If there is condensation or fog on the inside of the screen your phone is probably water damaged and will not function.

Dropping your phone can cause damage to the internals even without obvious external damage. You may need to replace the motherboard or screen.

Camera application shuts down or does not operate

This pop-up appears and the camera will not work. There seems to be no available fix yet but Samsung is aware of this problem and are willing to replace the device if this problem arises.

The phone's camera may be damaged or broken and may need to be replaced.

The services that the camera application relies on may take too long to load or may be unresponsive. Usually a phone restart will fix the problem or you can clear the camera app's cache and data.

The phone's camera stays blank or black. Try turning off the phone, removing the battery pack, then restarting the phone. You can also try closing background apps or doing a factory reset. Remember to backup the data on your phone before doing a factory reset.

You will need to replace the Camera.

Galaxy S5 is on, but no sound is coming through the speakers

The phone's volume may be low or muted. Press the volume rocker on the side of the device in either direction. An overlay will appear displaying the current volume level and a gear icon. Pressing the gear icon will display volume sliders for Ringtone, Media, Notifications, and System. The volume may be low enough that it cannot be heard over background noise.

If the icon displayed in the volume settings is a speaker with a line through it, the volume is muted for that item. Drag the slider as you would to increase the volume and it will no longer be muted.

If headphones are plugged into the Galaxy S5, the audio will be sent to the headphones and not the speaker.

The speakers in the phone may have suffered water damage. To check if the phone has water damage, remove the battery. Below the battery is a small plastic square that ordinarily is white, if it is red the phone has suffered water damage. Although the Galaxy S5 is water resistent, it is not waterproof and requires the USB slot cover to be completely closed.

The speaker in the phone may not be working. Try turning off the phone, removing and reinserting the battery, and restarting the phone. The speaker might need to be replaced.

If you have a phone charm that plugs into the phone's headphone jack, the phone may think headphones are plugged in and not send audio to the speakers. Remove the charm and the phone will play sound through the speakers.

Headphones are plugged in, but no sound is being played through them

The phone's volume may be low or muted. Press the volume rocker on the side of the device in either direction. An overlay will appear displaying the current volume level and a gear icon. Pressing the gear icon will display volume sliders for Ringtone, Media, Notifications, and System. The volume may be low enough that it cannot be heard over background noise.

If the icon displayed in the volume settings is a speaker with a line through it, the volume is muted for that item. Drag the slider as you would to increase the volume and it will no longer be muted.

It is possible that the application that you are using is frozen or doesn't use any audio.

The headphone port on your phone is always exposed and could get lint trapped inside of it. This will get in the way of the connection between the headphone's plug and the socket. Blow into the headphone port or use compressed air to clear it out.

Your headphones may be broken and need to be replaced.

The phone's headphone port may be broken and need to be replaced.

Your phone is attached to the charger but will not charge

The Galaxy S5 uses a USB 3.0 charging port instead of USB 2.0. If phone is charging while attached to your computer which does not have a "USB 3.0 SuperSpeed" port, then the device may charge slower than when it is plugged into the wall.

Make sure the wall socket that you are plugging that charger into works by charging other devices with it.

Make sure the charger is functional by testing it on another phone with a USB 3.0 charging port.

The battery may be unable to charge and will need to be replaced. You can buy a replacement battery from a third party or from Samsung.

The USB charging port may be broken and need to be replaced.

The SD card is inserted but the phone cannot access it

If your Galaxy S5 does not recognize that your SD memory card is plugged in, turn off your phone, remove the battery and try reinserting the memory card. When reinserting your memory card make sure that the gold contact pins are facing downward.

If the device does not recognize your SD card after checking the physical connection, insert it into your computer and format it with a FAT 32 file system. Remember to back up any data you have on the card, you will lose it all when you format it.

The display works but will not respond to touch

Take a microfiber cloth and wipe the screen clear of any water or grease. This can interfere with the touchscreen recognition.

The screen will need to be replaced.

Most gloves will interfere with touchscreen sensors. Take off any material covering your hands.

The display is flickering, or is flashing a green or yellow colour

The S5’s AMOLED display is known to wear out over time. Using a higher brightness setting will oftentimes alleviate the issue, however the only true fix is to replace the screen.

The screen will likely always have these issues when turning the display on or off, or after leaving the phone for long enough, due to the phone’s dimming features.

Anecdotally, keeping the screen at a higher brightness before the issues occur will help prolong the life of the screen.

Temperature also anecdotally appears to affect the display. The colder it gets, the more it flickers at the same brightness.

Workarounds:

• Turn off automatic brightness and turn off power saving mode to help keep the brightness increased.
• A third party screen dimming app can be used, such as Twilight. This works as the screen itself is technically at the same brightness on the hardware level.
• A custom kernel can be installed to change the minimum screen brightness to a level where it will not flicker.
• Some users have allegedly found success by turning on the setting “Disable Hardware Overlays” in Developer Options, and waiting up to 5 hours. This is untested and may affect battery life.

The phone is working normally, except it cannot make calls

Make sure that your device is not in airplane mode.

Check if your device has cellular reception where you are.

If you are unable to make a call even after restarting your device and relocating to a location that is known to have cell service you may need to replace the motherboard or cellular antennae.