Samsung Galaxy Note 5 S-Pen Will No Longer Wreck Your Handset

It appears Samsung’s “pen-gate” with the Galaxy Note 5 smartphone is over. The Korean manufacturer has quietly been working on a fix for an issue, which rendered the S-Pen features on the Galaxy Note useless if users inserted the stylus into the handset backwards.

An anonymous reader recently tipped Phandroid off to the development, sharing an image of two Galaxy Note 5 circuit boards, one original and the other with the new S-Pen safety update.

On the right is the original Galaxy Note 5 circuit board. The black tab would catch on the new push-to-eject design of the S-Pen and some found they weren’t able to remove the backwards S-Pen from their Galaxy Note 5 handsets. Others, who forcibly removed the S-Pen, found many stylus features would no longer work. The black tab is the detector, which lets the handset know the stylus has been removed.

On the left is the updated Galaxy Note 5 circuit board, which features a grey protective cap over the black tab. This feature will likely allow the Galaxy Note 5 S-Pen to be inserted from any direction without disrupting the detector tab.

Not that users should insert their Galaxy Note 5 S-Pen backwards, but we know, accidents happen. When the issue arose is August, pundits noted that the Galaxy Note 5 instruction manual includes details about not inserting the S-Pen backwards.

There is no word on which Galaxy Note 5 models have this updated feature and Samsung has not commented on the matter. For now, users should just remain in the safe side: Don’t insert your S-Pen backwards.