Magnetic case/cover still causes S Pen issues with Galaxy Note phones

Samsung Galaxy Note 9 has had its share of problems and issues ever since the flagship was launched. The selling point of the phone – S Pen – has also been part of the complaints.

And now, we’re seeing a bunch of more S Pen related problems being reported by a significant number of users. From phone not recognizing/detecting the accessory as inserted or connected to S Pen not charging and even not responding in some cases, there are all sorts of reports.

Take a look:

My phone refuses to connect to the S-pen, i’ve tried everything, soft and hard resets, wiped all the cache. Done everything

There is also a “dead zone” in the screen while using the s pen. Its situated towards the right edge approximately near where the tip of the pen would be if you were to lie it on the screen point up

In my situation, both of those occur. On the couple of times I got it to connect for a very short period it would then drop out and say not connected and when you would insert the pen to attempt to link back up it wouldn’t detect it again for many dozens of tries

I am having the same trouble on my ~2 week old device. The problems started almost immediately. Restarting the phone has no effect, and within the past few days, I have been getting low battery alerts from the S Pen, which rarely spends time outside its dock

Turns out the root of these problems is likely the case or cover users have on their Note 9 units. Specifically, if the cover is magnetic, you’ll surely be facing these kind of problems.

The source of this information is Samsung itself. The company published support pages in last couple of months informing users about this limitation. Here’s what those support pages say:

If a magnetic case or cover is attached to the device, the device may not recognize the S Pen actions and the S Pen may not work properly. In this case kindly remove magnetic case or cover and then use S Pen

If the back of your device comes into contact with a magnet, the device may not recognize the S Pen and it will fail to charge the S Pen

And this has been corroborated by a lot of Note 9 users who confirmed that removing the magnetic case or cover from their phone did the trick – the S Pen started working (and charging) again like it normally should.

Not a new issue

If you try to dig in more, you’ll realize this isn’t a new problem with S Pens of Galaxy Note line up. There’s a Samsung support page from earlier this year that warns Galaxy Note 8 users about the same problem.

If you attach a magnetic case or cover to Samsung Galaxy Note8, Galaxy Note8 may not recognize the S Pen actions and the S Pen may not work properly

Plus, we could also find similar reports even from Galaxy Note 4 users. So it’s clearly a long known issue, which Samsung either doesn’t want to address or currently doesn’t have a solution to.

Anyway, if you are facing any of these S Pen problems and have a magnetic case or cover, try removing that and see if your issue gets resolved. Oh, and yes, do let us know you S Pen experience in comments below.

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