Samsung rushed their Galaxy S10 5G smartphone to market last Friday to gain bragging rights for having the first pure 5G smartphone on the market. So they equally deserve the bad press they're now getting in South Korea for their 5G phones failing to switch from 5G to LTE in areas yet not covered by 5G service. The phones are simply disconnecting. When customers pay a premium for 5G service, the anger is swift when they run into connectivity problems right out of the gate.

It's being reported by Business Korea today that "users of the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G have complained that their smartphones did not switch from 5G to LTE. The Galaxy S10 5G, which was launched on April 5th as the world’s first 5G smartphone, also had other problems such as limited 5G service coverage and a slow speed.

These users complained that when the Galaxy S10 5G switched from 5G signals to LTE signals, data service was disconnected. This happened to subscribers of all of the three mobile carriers in Korea from April 5 to 8, according to users’ posts on Internet communities on Apr. 9.

In areas where 5G signals are not detected, the Galaxy S10 5G is expected to be automatically switched to an LTE signal, connecting to the internet, but it was continuously disconnected, they said. They complain that that they have to reboot several times to connect to the network again.

It is normal that smartphones switch between 5G and 4G naturally so that users can not notice it, just as they do not feel any delay and buffering phenomena when switching between 3G and 4G. The Galaxy S10 5G is loaded with one 4G antenna and one 5G antenna for the simultaneous reception of 4G signals where 5G telecommunication was not available. This is a separate issue from the fact that a 5G signal is not caught in the first place or 5G speeds are slow for a smartphone due to the limitations of 5G coverage.

Consumer complaints are mounting but the three mobile carriers and the manufacturer are shirking their responsibilities and failing to offer proper countermeasures for consumers.

Samsung Electronics updated the smartphone’s software to receive base station signals more quickly on April 6, but consumers said that LTE internet connection were still not smooth on updated handsets. SK Telecom and LG U+ said that they had finished updating their base station software as the problem occurred on their 5G service launch days.

Samsung Electronics continues to state that it has already provided all software updates that it could do.

However an industry expert said that the problem is not that the number of 5G base stations are still small but communication network optimization work has not been completed so signal relays between base stations are not smooth.

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