⟐ Answered December 23, 2025 at 23:13 MST

I come here to ask for some advice on my water damaged galaxy s20.

Back Story:

I was changing the battery on my phone and as was suggested in the iFixit guide, I applied alcohol to the battery area to loosen the adhesive. Unfortunately, I didn't read the label and ended up putting alcohol that only had about 40% alcohol. This caused me to unknowingly damage the phone.

Once I finished the install I turned the phone on and initially, everything worked fine. I went to turn on the camera and I was told camera failure and was sent back to the home screen. After half a minute or so the screen went black. I tried for a little longer to hard reset the phone until I decided to quickly take apart the phone again, unplug the battery and look for the problem.

After taking the phone fully apart I discovered some liquid in the sd card area. I dried it as much as I could and put everything into a bag with desiccant overnight. This morning I reassembled it and tried to turn it on but still the same problem. I then took the phone even further apart and found that the humidity indicator near the bottom of the phone also was pink (though I never saw liquid there myself). I also cleaned all the electronics with contact spray (made for electronics) and scrubbed with a toothbrush.

Problem:

Phone turns on, vibrates, makes noise, charges, takes touch input BUT fully black screen.

I don't know wether my motherboard or display is broken (or both!)?

Replacing the motherboard is not hard and not nearly as expensive as replacing the display but I also don't want to get a replacement motherboard only for the display to remain black...

Any help is greatly appreciated!

⟐ Commented February 02, 2025 at 2:51 MST

I am trying to make little gaming device similar to this and i want to know if I can get rid of the broken screen and use an external display via usbc to usbc. Would it work without the original display?

I could leave the broken screen on the phone, but it never turns of, keeps flickering, so it drains the battery way faster than it should.

⟐ Commented December 11, 2023 at 14:14 MST

Is it possible that only the 2G transmitter in the phone is broken but the receiver and antenna are fine, so it can scan for cell towers but never connect? Is it even a thing that only the transmitter can get fried and not the whole baseband chip or at least the band's receiver as well? Or does the phone use two different antennas for 2G transmission and reception and one has a bad contact or something like that? 4G always works fine on the phone if it's available. What else can I check?

⟐ Answer accepted October 30, 2023 at 15:54 MST

⟐ Answered August 14, 2025 at 3:06 MST

⟐ Commented March 24, 2025 at 11:36 MST

And can you give me some tips?

⟐ Commented May 20, 2025 at 3:52 MST

teardown went mostly smoothly (usb-c port was full of lint but I could get it out with port inside of phone) I got to battery removal step and it says "using your isopropyl alch 90% remove battery adhesive" I didn't have 90% isopropyl on hand or any, so i went to the store bought 70% and a little plastic medicine syringe. in the process of removing the battery adhesive it was very very difficult and the medicine syringe was very bad at pouring it in a small area, every few insertion attempts it would get stuck? and fart out in a wide area. at this point what I thought was going to take a short 2~ hours has taken at least 3 and its not even back together yet so i begin reassembly and figure ill leave it off long term while it dry's off all the isopropyl alch, this didn't work as planned while reassembling it turned itself back on.

Presumably I bumped power button but I'm not sure, once fully assembled fingerprint sensor wasn't working, moisture inside camera and screen having flickering issues before screen became unresponsive, left it in rice for 2~3 days attempted to turn on and it powered screen on when plugged in. upon powering on it was working for less than 5 min before freezing so I gave it a few days and tried again if I plug it in it wont seem to charge the charging circle will show up but the number doesn't increase at all I can power it on while it is in charger plugged in.

while it is off and plugged in no number shows up just a circle with lighting bolt and no moving green bars so I'm guessing I broke the battery in some way?

I can only power it on using the force start lower volume rocker and lock button, and its stuck on 0% battery, it doesn't seem to stay on for very long (sometimes I can get it to boot, attempts to run through Samsung members diagnostic fail as phone dies before it finishes.

so far I have gone and unplugged and re-plugged battery cable no noticeable difference.

I have left it plugged into chargers very longtime(like a few hours) but its stuck on attempting to charge while dead screen.

I took it as far apart as I originally had it (wireless charging coil & motherboard bracket out, battery unplugged, main display cable unplugged, lower midframe unfastened & loudspeaker removed, daughter board disconnected & removed, main & aux flex cables removed. I left it like this for 2 hours before reassembly no change.

apologies for formatting, grammar, and walls of text I tried to keep it nice looking and coherent, I'm very aware I messed up greatly and this is my fault, I would just like recommended steps to fix or anything like that

I am sure the isopropyl alch getting everywhere is at least partially the culprit but when I can turn it on screen and everything seems fine so I wonder if there's something wrong with the battery/usb-c port install.

anything at all is greatly appreciated :)

⟐ Commented July 09, 2023 at 13:04 MST

I replaced my battery on Samsung s20. I replaced it with a new one, reconnected all things back to their place (I did with the same steps as in ifixit tutorial on battery replacement) and everything worked. But next day phone somehow turned black, couldn't be turned on.

The I searched for the solution and came to the boot/ restart of the phone (with the power on and volume down button) and it worked again, at least two times, because after the logo or battery percentage (it displayed 54%) showed up, the screen started to flicker or it showed random colours. After two or three tries, it stopped showing anything.

At the moment it only vibrates and does sound when I connect it to the charger.

Any ideas how to fix this? Thanks.

⟐ Answered February 20, 2023 at 3:56 MST

both can have same new display ?

⟐ Answer deleted April 10, 2022 at 3:38 MST

⟐ Commented September 17, 2021 at 20:54 MST

Firstly my phone got water damage and already service all part include’s motherboard and all other board there,and i went all funtinloned well with all system except it has no network signal when i insert a sim card .but a other wifi connection and other its seems to be normal .can helped me with some answers amd how to troubleshoot this error with less budget (diy ) so at the same time i can learn something from there .

⟐ Edited March 13, 2025 at 17:18 MST

⟐ Commented January 07, 2023 at 9:26 MST

⟐ Answer edited February 05, 2026 at 23:11 MST

I cleaned the port with 90% Isopropyl alcohol and a tooth flosser thingy (powered off obviously). I dried it out and the notification went away. However it has reappeared a week later when I plugged in another cable.

-I’ve tried different cables various brands and originals with no luck.

-I’ve tried clearing the USB cache.

-I’ve tried a factory reset.

⟐ Answered August 09, 2023 at 2:33 MST

Item # IF437-037-2

⟐ Answer edited March 24, 2023 at 15:20 MST

⟐ Answered September 13, 2022 at 7:26 MST

I force restarted this phone and got it to make noise but I’m not seeing an image. when I shine a flashlight on it I can see a small box, it almost looks like the battery charging symbolbut it’s not, in the lower center of the screen. is this normal or is the screen needing replaced?

⟐ Answered April 21, 2022 at 19:47 MST

Recently I decided to replace the battery on my S20 5G, I did it using the guide here and all was good, or so I thought.

The health of the old battery according to AccuBattery was around 67%, after installing the new one I reset the cycle counter using the Samsung repair assistant app and let it cycle a couple of times from 0% to 100% to calibrate, also according to the guide here on the site.

Now, my "new", supposedly OEM, battery only showed 85% health after 2 weeks of usage. I discussed with the store I bought it from and they sent me another "new" battery, but after again resetting the cycle counter etc., and 2 weeks later even the second "new" battery is showing 81% health...

Am I doing something wrong here? Or are these batteries bad/used/fakes? I'm lost tbh...

Thanks in advance to anyone who can enlighten me!

⟐ Answered December 24, 2025 at 5:38 MST

⟐ Answer accepted November 29, 2025 at 22:20 MST