Remember the iPhone 4’s “You Are Holding It Wrong” antenna gate problem? It seems that Samsung has another one of those in his hands. Reports claim that the Galaxy Tab S5e tablet has a design flaw that makes its Wi-Fi connection go to hell.
Like the iPhone 4 — which short circuited its external steel antennas if you pressed your fingers against them — the problem seems to depend on how you hold the tablet. If you hold it from one of the corners like this photo shows, the Wi-Fi speed will go down quickly, even disconnecting from the network:
Galaxy Tab S5e user David Waner says he has been able to test the problem in two tablets as soon as his hand covers the corner. “Tablet has a major design flaw,” Warner said in an Instagram post.
Sam Mobile has confirmed the issue, claiming that they have experimented drops in signal strength of up to 50%. “[E]nough of a drop to affect performance while streaming a movie through Netflix, for example,” they wrote, “or fighting to the end in an intense Battle Royale on Fortnite.”
According to Sam Mobile, users have already asked Samsung for a fix. The company, the blog says, has sent replacement tablets in response but those have exactly the same issue, which seems to indicate it is a design problem — just like the iPhone 4. Except maybe this time a case won’t fix it.
This new design problem comes right after a major public backslash in response to poor design and quality assurance on the Korean company’s new Galaxy Fold phone, which appears to suffer from enough problems that Samsung was forced to delay the launch indefinitely.
Before that, Samsung experienced another giant flaming PR disaster in the form of multiple Galaxy Note 7 units spontaneously catching fire, which prompted airlines to ban the devices and eventually pushed Samsung to issue a global recall.
We have reached out to Samsung and will post their response to these reports as soon as they get back to us. Let’s hope they don’t rip off a page from Steve Jobs’ playbook and offer a real fix instead of blaming users.
