Apple has no plans to introduce 5G to iPhones until at least 2020 or later. Samsung, however, was the first company to jump on the bandwagon and released the 5G variant of the Galaxy S10 in South Korea earlier this month. Ironically though, the Galaxy S10 5G is having issues connecting to 5G networks itself.

A number of Galaxy S10 5G customers in Korea have been complaining about mobile data connectivity issues on their phone. Users complain that their phone loses mobile data connectivity when it switches from 5G to LTE. In areas where 5G signals are non-existent, the S10 5G should automatically connect to an LTE network. However, instead of doing that, the phone continues to search for a non-existent 5G network. Users end up having to reboot their devices multiple times to ensure it is able to connect to the network again.

The issue is happening with all three major carriers in South Korea — SK Telecom, LG U+, and KT.

What’s worse is that both Samsung and the three network operators are refusing to take charge of the situation and look into solving the problem. Samsung, on its part, rolled out a software update to ensure the Galaxy S10 5G connects to a base station more quickly but that did not seem to help much. SK Telecom and LG U+ also rolled out updates for their base stations just a couple of days before the Galaxy S10 5G launch to address some issues with their 5G networks.

“We cannot rule out the possibility of terminals’ failure to smoothly switch from one service mode to another,” said an official of a telecom company. But Samsung Electronics said it has already provided all software updates that it could do.

Our Take

It looks like there is still some optimization and tweaking left on the part of Korean carriers and Samsung which is leading to such issues. Nonetheless, this clearly highlights that 5G is far from ready for the mainstream and there are going to be plenty of such issues. Unlike other smartphone OEMs, Apple is known to adopt a tech only when it is mature enough and 5G connectivity is far from that. Thus, by not offering a 5G iPhone until 2020 or even 2021, Apple is just sparing customers from such teething troubles.

[Via Business Korea]

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