Some Samsung Galaxy S10 5G owners are complaining that their handset is suffering from a frustrating bug that leaves them with no choice but to reboot it, in order to acquire a 5G connection after it has selected LTE as the most suitable cellular standard for the current environment.
The Galaxy S10 5G has separate 5G and LTE antennas that simultaneously maintain the network connections, combining them to deliver transfer speeds of up to 2.7Gbps. However, these customers are saying that their handset is unable to re-establish a 5G connection after it loses it.
There are a number of reasons the antenna could drop the 5G connection, ranging from the handset passing between two cellular towers — one of which had to hand off the connection to another — to the device deciding against taking advantage of the standard because the signal strength is too weak.
It's no different to when a 4G handset drops to 3G when passing through certain areas that haven't been armed with the required cellular hardware. That's a rare occurrence nowadays, but with 5G being brand new, dropping to LTE is a daily occurrence in Korea where the Galaxy S10 5G is available.
The subset of owners are saying that their handset won't reacquire a 5G connection until it has been restarted multiple times. Samsung has, however, rolled out a number of firmware updates for the Galaxy S10 5G over the course of the past week, so there's a chance the bug has since been resolved.
Every new device has its teething issues — especially when it's pioneering new technology. It's down to the manufacturers to address them in a timely manner, and we have every confidence that Samsung, which has an established record of launching one-of-a-kind devices, will do just that.
