It looks like the roll-out of 5G phones is hitting consumers much like the early days of 4G did, at least in South Korea. Galaxy S10 5G owners have complained to Samsung about connection troubles when their devices attempt to switch between 5G and 4G radios.

BusinessKorea reports that shortly after the first customers got their S10 5G units, a number of them said that on some occasions when the phone had to move between 5G and 4G, their data reception failed completely, whether on LG Uplus, KT, or SK Telecom. The users go on to say it has taken then several reboots to restore any cellular reception. This is in addition to other users airing their 5G growing pains like spotty signals and intense power consumption.

Samsung released a software update to the phones on April 6 to improve general reception while SK Telecom and LG Uplus put in new software at their cell sites. Those measures, however, have not appeared to immediately address the disconnection problem, but Samsung has stated that it has already done what it could do on its end.

The cellular industry — from Qualcomm to the carriers — has repeatedly promised that 5G-to-4G switching would not be as cruddy as it was back in 2010 with 4G-to-3G switching. In fact, our Ryan Whitwam found network hand-off to be consistently on point while he was testing Verizon's 5G network. We'll have to watch if the disconnect issues we've seen in South Korea will exist when the Galaxy S10 5G makes it across the Pacific.

Source: BusinessKorea

Via: Samsung (1), (2)