The present disclosure provides an electronic device having a USB interface and a method for starting USB communication with such an electronic device, so as to solve the problem of a risk of damaging a mobile phone terminal device arising from sharing of an interface by a charger and a USB communication cable in the related art. In the electronic device, a port GPIO of a baseband chip is connected to a pin USB_VBUS of a USB interface of the baseband chip; based on this circuit, a power management chip detects a state of plugging-in-or-pulling-out of the charger and generates a corresponding interrupt request; and the baseband chip controls the GPIO to output a corresponding level according to the interrupt request. By connecting the port GPIO and the pin USB_VBUS and controlling an output level of GPIO with a software, a high level or a low level (as a triggering signal for starting or terminating the USB communication) is input to the pin USB_VBUS, thus avoiding damage to the device.