It looks like Samsung has something akin to antennae-gate on its hands. Pen-gate?
Android Police found a pretty alarming design flaw in the company’s new Galaxy Note 5 – one that can cause permanent or at least hard-to-reverse damage.
Apparently, it’s incredibly easily to insert the stylus the wrong way into the device, and this could lead to serious problems.
From Android Police:
The flaw stems from Samsung’s new S Pen slot design on the Note 5, and you may have read about this already elsewhere, but here’s our take on it. Basically, on previous Galaxy Note smartphones, attempting to inset the S Pen in the device in the wrong direction resulted in obvious futility – they won’t fit, or if they do, they require substantial force to get into the S Pen slot the wrong way, enough that you’d immediately realize you were doing something wrong.
On the Note 5, inserting the S Pen the wrong way provides exactly as much resistance as inserting it the right way. Which is to say: basically none at all. Once you insert the pen far enough in the wrong direction (again, which causes no strange resistance or feel than putting it in the right way), it will get stuck. It doesn’t even have to “click” in. At this point, of course, you will panic. And you will try to get it out – and most likely, you’ll succeed. The problem is that if you do succeed, there’s a very real possibility you’ll break whatever mechanism the device uses to detect whether the pen is attached or detached from the phone.
Of course, the Note 5 knowing that the S-Pen is attached can screw up some the device’s features.
Samsung has responded, kind of.
“We highly recommend our Galaxy Note 5 users follow the instructions in the user guide to ensure they do not experience such an unexpected scenario caused by reinserting the S-Pen in the other way around,” said Samsung in a statement.
That doesn’t sound like much more than well, don’t put it in the wrong way guys.
