[Fix] LG G3 blue screen of death and fix

I never imaged that Android has blue screen of death until my son handed to me his LG G3 smartphone with a blue screen of death. And after several seconds, the blue screen disappeared and the phone went “dead” and would not respond to any buttons, including long-holding the power button. After I opened up the phone case, take out the battery, and put it back, I was able to turn the phone on, but immediately the same blue screen appeared followed by the same situation with no button responding. I was totally convinced that Android suffers the blue screen of death as well.

Before I tell you how I found out the cause and the fix, let me give you another piece of information to help you identify if your LG G3 has the same problem.

About two weeks before the blue screen of death incident, my son told me one day that the WIFI on his phone has stopped working: the WIFI service cannot be turned on or cannot stay on for enough time to establish a wireless connection. The mobile data service, however, worked just fine and he could connect to LTE or 4G with no issues. After some online searches, I found the only temporary solution is to do a cache partition wipe, however, the WIFI service after the wipe usually worked for several hours before it died again. Since he could still use the mobile data connection, I decided not to try to fix the WIFI issue again, instead we decided to get him a new phone when we saved enough money. However, this blue screen of death issue obviously is more urgent than failed WIFI service and it forced me to start investigation again.

During my online searches, I came across some posts claiming that they fixed the same problem by putting the motherboard of the phone in an conventional oven at around 350 F for about 10 minutes (post #20, 24, 25, 26 in this page, a similar solution in this thread). At first I thought those people were joking and were trying to toast their malfunctioning phones out of despair, but after so many unsuccessful trials myself, I became so desperate that I was willing to give any suggested idea a try, so I followed their instructions in the post above and I was surprised and speechless to find out that it actually worked! Not only it fixed the blue screen of death problem, it also fixed the previous WIFI issue, so the phone is back to normal. After I thought it through, I think the WIFI issue and the later blue screen of death are related and were caused by the same problem: LG didn’t do a good job on moisture prevention for the phone’s motherboard. Maybe the coating they put on the motherboard is defective, and when the weather becomes cold (happened to be the case in my area), moisture made it the way to the motherboard and may have short-circuited the motherboard. When the motherboard is put in oven at 350 F, the heat will drive out the moisture resulting a functional motherboard and phone.

If your LG G3 phone suffers from the blue screen of death, you can try this solution (at your own risk):

1. Open the phone case and take out the battery, SIM card, SD card, and other removable cables, such as camera. If not, they will get melted in the oven!

2. Remove the motherboard and place it in a baking pan. You may place two metal spoons in the baking pan and place the motherboard on the spoons to have some gap between the motherboard and the baking pan.

3. Preheat the conventional oven to 350 F and then put the baking pan in it for 10 minutes. Then stop the oven and open the oven door to let the hot air out. Take out the motherboard when it is not hot, then put it back in your phone and assemble the parts you removed.

4. Now try to turn it on and be surprised.

As a matter of fact, any phone with this moisture related problem can be fixed with this unbelievable solution.

Hope this helped you as it helped me.