It was reported last week that some Galaxy Note 8 owners had complained on the Samsung community website that their handset basically bricked itself after the battery was drained completely. They couldn’t turn on the device by plugging it in. Swapping chargers didn’t help and neither did trying to power it on in safe mode.

There were some reports from Galaxy S8+ owners as well who faced a similar problem. Samsung didn’t provide an explanation but it did offer replacements to affected customers.

Galaxy Note 8 battery issue

It’s unclear at this point in time what’s causing this Galaxy Note 8 battery issue. Samsung hasn’t explained it and no one has been able to figure it out. Devices from US carriers appear to be most affected by this issue so it’s likely that the Galaxy Note 8 battery issue is limited to the Snapdragon-powered variant.

It can’t be said for sure right now if this is a hardware or a software issue. Some users reported that their unit shows the charging circle when connected but doesn’t actually charge. Others said that the device gets warm but the screen doesn’t turn on. Wireless charging doesn’t help either.

Samsung has now acknowledged the Galaxy Note 8 battery issue. It has sent out the following statement (machine translated from German):

Samsung is taking all reports of this kind seriously, we only received a very small number of customer inquiries that could be linked to charge management, and unfortunately we can only comment on the matter further.

The statement is vague at best and doesn’t help us understand what’s causing this. Hopefully, it will provide more clarity on this in the near future.