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Help Wall Charger Doesn't Work, Computer Doesn't Recognise S4

O

omglando

Lurker
I've had my s4 for about a month and have been very happy.

Last night my battery was at roughly 70% charger when I plugged it in for the factory charger for the night and went to sleep. This morning, when I woke up, the battery was dead and the phone wouldn't boot. There was no evidence of any overheating alarm or issues during the night.

I figured that the charger had come unplugged and the battery had died, but it seemed like there should have been enough battery life to make it through the night.

When I put my extra battery in the phone, it booted up normally and everything looked fine. However, when I plugged it into the factory samsung wall charger, nothing happened. I tried an old wall charger from the droid x2, and it didn't work either. However, the when the usb cable was plugged into a usb port on my computer, it does charge, but my PC says that the "device is not recognized" where previously it would recognize my s4. My verizon car charger seems to work as well.

I've since tested both batteries (I have a separate battery charger) and both seem to work fine and have no issues. The life of both seems to be normal and the phone is operating normally except for (1) the wall chargers not working and (2) the phone not being recognized by the computer. I've also cleaned/fussed with the charging port quite a bit to see if it is just a dirty terminal issue.

I'm guessing my next step will be a memory wipe/phone reset. If that doesn't work, I'll probably look into swapping out the charging port.

Any thoughts on what might be going on with my s4? Has anybody had a similar issue before?
 
omglando said:
I've had my s4 for about a month and have been very happy.

Last night my battery was at roughly 70% charger when I plugged it in for the factory charger for the night and went to sleep. This morning, when I woke up, the battery was dead and the phone wouldn't boot. There was no evidence of any overheating alarm or issues during the night.

I figured that the charger had come unplugged and the battery had died, but it seemed like there should have been enough battery life to make it through the night.

When I put my extra battery in the phone, it booted up normally and everything looked fine. However, when I plugged it into the factory samsung wall charger, nothing happened. I tried an old wall charger from the droid x2, and it didn't work either. However, the when the usb cable was plugged into a usb port on my computer, it does charge, but my PC says that the "device is not recognized" where previously it would recognize my s4. My verizon car charger seems to work as well.

I've since tested both batteries (I have a separate battery charger) and both seem to work fine and have no issues. The life of both seems to be normal and the phone is operating normally except for (1) the wall chargers not working and (2) the phone not being recognized by the computer. I've also cleaned/fussed with the charging port quite a bit to see if it is just a dirty terminal issue.

I'm guessing my next step will be a memory wipe/phone reset. If that doesn't work, I'll probably look into swapping out the charging port.

Any thoughts on what might be going on with my s4? Has anybody had a similar issue before?
Click to expand...

Sounds like a bad charger. +

Phone could be set to allow fast charge (so data wouldn't work--some roms /kernels allow this)
Could be a "charge only" cable or cable could have malfunctioned to this state. In that case phone would charge from USB port but wouldn't be recognized for data.
I have had all these things happen & it wasn't anything really wrong with the phone.
 
I have two wall chargers (one Samsung OEM) that I have tried with this phone and neither seems to work, even with different charger/cable combinations.

All of the combinations work with my old droid X2 and my girlfriend's nokia Lumia 1020.

Since my last post, it seems like the situation has gotten worse and now I cannot get my phone to charger at all when plugged into a usb port, haven't tried the car charger. Depending on the stand-alone battery charger at this point to keep things charged up.

Starting to think that it must be the port on the phone. Is it worth doing a hard reset?
 
Bought the phone second hand but unused so no warranty. It looks like the port replacement is a pretty doable fix, just wish the phone had made it longer than a month before developing this issue. Oh well
 
You could always look at your household insurance & see if that covers you, mine covers my phone for a load of things.
 
Google S4 wan't charge and you'll find a bazillion threads.

The usual suspects: battery (you ruled out), charger, cord, port. Try using different cord or charger.

The particular combination of the charging port and cable is often a problem. Something gets bent (like when you try to plug in upside down, or when you drop the phone while plugged) and they no longer mate right. You can tweak either your port or your cord to try to get them to line up better. I'd rather start with the cord. I crushed the center of the cord plug inward (so the opening was narrower) with needle-nose plyers and that fixed it for me. Saw it on a youtube video. There were also videos about tweaking the charger port but again that would be later option for me.

There are lots of other ideas out there and I'd never suggest the fix for mine is the fix for everyones. I do think I'd look at a lot of other things before thinking about hard reset.
 
The S4 is notorious for having the charging port go bad. I had to switch mine out.

The nice thing is it is cheap (I paid 20 bucks maybe?) And very easy to do on the S4 if you're careful.
 
I had an issue with my S4 suddenly not charging with some of the chargers I had used before. It also wouldn't work with the USB cables for the computer. After trying everything I had read, short of replacing the charging port, I powered off the phone and turned it back on. Everything works just fine now! I feel dumb, but relieved.
 
If it charges using the Car charger, it cannot be the port. If you can, use different cables and it most likely will be the cable at fault. I'd try using the car charger and if it works, use that cable to plug into the wall charger. Of course, that is if the cable is a removable cable. The wire pinouts for a car chager uses the same points for charging as any wall charger points. The phone and cable combination determines the amount of current drop as theb attery's charge level increases so it should not matter what the device is that's charging the phone. I'd absolutely hold off on the factory reset, unless you enjoy having to replace all your apps and data..... I don't LOL. There are also apps that will back up all your sms,mms, phone log and contacts if you have to do the reset. I got it free from the market years ago... "MyBackup Pro" It has saved me a hella bunch of time even when I have to reverse my phone to a previously backed up state. I'll lay odds that the cable/charger interchanging will again charge the phone's battery... You might even be so "lucky" that a charging adapter AS WELL AS a cable is defective....
Good Luck, and I hope I wasn't too late with the info.
Aloha...
 
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