An Issue Is Causing The Galaxy S10 & S10+ Battery To Drain Faster

Nearly a month after Samsung announced its Galaxy S10 series, owners of the latest Samsung flagship have gone online to report an issue they have had with the phones. This issue has been causing the battery on the Galaxy S10 and Galaxy S10+ to drain faster than normal. The culprit to this annoying issue is proven to be the new ultrasonic fingerprint sensor on the Galaxy S10 duo. As described by users, the Galaxy S10 and S10+ appear to be waking too often in their pockets.

Samsung US Community and Reddit are two main forums that owners of the Galaxy S10 and Galaxy S10+ have been complaining about. They said that it seems like their devices are waking way too much either in their pockets or their bags leading to faster battery drain. According to SamMobile, it appears that these two phones think that the fabric in users’ bag or pocket is actually a fingerprint and it understands that their owners are trying to unlock them via the fingerprint scanner. Users say that they can even feel the vibration when the fingerprint is rejected. Moreover, the devices also think that the pocket or bag’s fabric is tapping on their displays which invokes the function called “Tap to Wake” and hence, it wakes up the phones.

According to some other complaints, the “Tap to Wake” features also opens the camera app in some occasions and that also leads to worse power drain as the camera sensor needs more power to function compared to the on-screen fingerprint sensor and the screen in the same time length. It is even worse when the camera is on in users’ pocket as it will operate under low-light conditions which will need even draw more power.

It is worth noting that it seems like this issue is only happening on the US models of the two S10 phones which is significantly different from other models in the world as it is the only version to come with a Snapdragon 855 SoC.

Samsung has responded to users and asked them to display both “Always-On Display” and “Tap to Wake” features, but it is just a temporary solution for handsets that are priced at around $1,000.