Recent reports suggest that the Samsung Galaxy Tab S5e, a mid-range tablet offering from the company, has a design flaw that causes the tablet to disconnect from Wi-Fi networks.
The connectivity issue of the tablet appears whenever the person holds the device horizontally, with the front-facing camera oriented towards the left. It is likely that holding the device in this manner will result in hand-blocking the receiving antennas located at the lower-left corner of the tablet, preventing the device from getting a proper signal from a Wi-Fi router.
David Waner, a customer who owns units of the Galaxy Tab S5e, shared on his Instagram account that he was able to reproduce the problem in the second unit of the Galaxy Tab S5e he owned, which unfortunately suggests that the issue may also appear in other units of the Samsung tablet.
However, independent testing conducted by the online publication SamMobile suggests that blocking the receiving antennas will not always result in the loss of Wi-Fi signal, although the reduction in the signal strength, accompanied with much lower download and upload speeds, will affect the content consumption experience of people owning the device.
Given that the problem is a design flaw, Samsung will have to fix this issue through a rearrangement of the internals of the device. While Samsung issued replacements to consumers who complained of the problem, users still experience the same issues, allegedly.
Nonetheless, for users who already own units of the Galaxy Tab S5e, handling the device vertically or holding the tablet horizontally with the selfie shooter pointed towards the right will not result in the disconnection of the Galaxy Tab S5e from Wi-Fi networks, given that at these orientations, the hand of the user does not block the tablet’s Wi-Fi receiver.
Samsung already dealt with multiple instances of design flaws regarding its mobile devices over the past few years. One of the most high-profile problems that the South Korean tech giant faced is the battery flaw of the Galaxy Note7. This particular issue resulted in some devices catching fire, forcing the company to recall around 2.5 million units of the smartphone.
Another more recent instance of product design flaws that Samsung encountered is the flexible display failure of the company’s first foldable phone, the Galaxy Fold. While Samsung has yet to provide an official explanation, iFixit provided some possible reasons behind the display failure of the smartphone, though that report was taken down on Samsung’s initiative.
These reasons include the fragility of OLED panels, exposure to potentially harmful substances like oxygen and water, easy removal of the protective polyimide film, and the intrusion of the dust and other particles through the gaps present at the top and bottom of the screen as well as from the back of the device.
The South Korean tech giant already mentioned that it is working to resolve the issue that affects the Galaxy Fold, and new information about the availability of the device may come in the near future, maybe even in the coming days.
