Hello All,
I've been a loyal Samsung-ite for near on a decade now.
After spending about a day debugging a new device I bought yesterday, I think I’ve uncovered a recurring USB-C issue affecting the Galaxy S21 FE and possibly other models.
After ruling out the device itself, I started examining kernel logs and found evidence pointing to a fault in the MAX77705 USBC contrler and its assocated TypeC Manager (TCM) daemon.
Particularly - the issue is with the MAX77705 chipset - and the TCM (Type C Manager daemon).
The relevant log entries are shown below.
Example 1: False “WATER DETECTED” event:
The kernel log from MAX77705 USB-C controller shows WATER DET=1 while VBUS is high (5 V present) and the port is simultaneously marked ATTACH=DETACH.
(My impression is that this state should be impossible under real moisture conditions, it can only occur due to a PDIC/PMIC logic fault.)
Example 2: This image shows a Immediate “DRY” transition
As you can see - the controller reports WATER DET=1 again, but this time it then then issues a Sending DRY event notice without any physical change to the device.
In both traces, the handshake fails in under a few milliseconds (it starts at 124.236267, and ends at 124.23635) -so the USB device never even negotiates properly. (As you will see from the logs - both (images) events are happened quite close together (within a few seconds - essentially me un-plugging and re-plugging the device).
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It's my opinion that the MAX77705 controller is generating false moisture-detection positives, which kill power and break PD negotiation.
If anyone else has seen phantom “moisture detected” warnings or flaky USB-C accessories on Samsung phones, this might explain it.
After looking into this extensively, these findings are consistent with other user reports of false moisture warnings, suggesting a potential firmware or logic issue in the Type-C manager (TCM) stack rather than a hardware fault.
Can Samsung confirm whether this is a known issue with the MAX77705 controller or the associated firmware logic?
