Following the disaster that was the Galaxy Note 7, Samsung has managed to avoid any other major controversies with its smartphone releases in the years since. But just days after the launch of the Galaxy S10 series, some users have begun to complain about an issue that is causing their batteries to drain at an accelerated rate.
As pointed out by SamMobile, some S10 owners have claimed that the phone’s display is turning on while sitting in their pocket due to the Tap to Wake feature. If the screen is constantly turning on and off while you’re walking around with the phone in your pocket, the battery is going to deplete itself earlier than it should.
“I have an S10, and I keep my phone in my pocket with the screen towards my leg (since my leg is far less likely to damage the screen),” explained Reddit user Drendude on the Galaxy S10 subreddit. “The only issue with this is that I started feeling the “fingerprint rejected” vibrations while the phone was in my pocket.”
In order to fix the problem, the user was forced to turn off the Always-On Display. As Drendude says in the thread, this is not “a huge issue,” but it is annoying and eliminates one of this flagship phone’s features.
“My leg through my fabric taps the phone and opens it up,” another S10 owner complained on Samsung’s community forums. “This is draining my battery, and your accidental touch protection feature is useless. That’s two features down right there. $900 for what? Flagship that doesn’t work properly?”
Having found several threads regarding the issue, SamMobile notes that most, if not all, of the complaints appear to originate within the US. If the issue is indeed isolated to a single region, it might just be a bug in the firmware, which Samsung could fix relatively easily. We’ll update this piece with any further developments.
