Massive Wi-Fi throttling on Samsung Galaxy S20 FE 5G purchased from Amazon India (September 2021 unit)

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Samsung Galaxy S20 FE 5G for Rs. 36999 (33999 including HDFC Offer)


TL;DR from this thread

Amazon India sale is delivering units manufactured in India in September 2021 in this sale. This batch seems to have a lot of units that have a very unreliable Wi-Fi. It would connect fine and would stay fine for a while but after a while, it slows down considerably. Turning it off and on again would fix the issue temporarily. Resetting the phone does not fix it. If you have such a unit, you should instantly apply for a replacement or refund. XDA has a thread that has 2-3 other folks who got a unit with the same problem. There is also supposedly a Telegram group but I am not a member. There is also discussions on the official Samsung Community. One such thread.

Important stuff: For replacement, do not apply for it through the order page. It would force you to deal with a tech visit from an outsourced company which delays the process. In my case, the tech guy did not bother visiting me. Called me up on the phone and asked me to reset the phone and go through the entire process again and see if that fixed the issue and ping him later so that he can process a replacement. He ended up closing my complaint without confirming me first. Amazon chat support initiated another tech visit which added another two-day delay. Phone support told me that they cannot help me because of this active request in their system and I should contact them once it is over, and I am not satisfied with the resolution. So, use the phone support option. This seems to be a safe and the fastest way to get a replacement and maybe even a refund if replacement units are also affected by this problem.

One member of the forum has confirmed that the unit he got from an earlier stock does not suffer from this issue. XDA and a few other outlets do confirm that there have been a few isolated cases of this issue affecting the entire S20 series. It is just too hard to tell if this is a hardware based issue or a firmware based one.

I ended up applying for a refund. If you are not sure how to test out wi-fi stability, install an app like WiFiMan which continuously monitor wi-fi connection speed. Or just download a very large file (10GB File) and see if it stays at similar speed levels consistently. On my S10 Lite, it is stable while on Fe, it keeps on changing while placed at the same place at same distance from the wireless router. Upload connection speeds actually drop down to 6mbps regularly. In my opinion, this should not happen when power savings are disabled, screen is on, and the app accessing Wi-Fi modem is in foreground.
 
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Seems like a case of throttling. Try posting on Samsung forum and check if other S20 FE 5G users are facing the same.
 
Hey, Regarding the Wifi Issues.

The theoretical speeds do fluctuate because of power saving settings. AFAIK, There isn't a way to adjust this on unrooted android. ipads/All the xiaomi phones I have drop speed down to 6mbps when they are sleeping. You can see this in the dashboard in Openwrt.

Maybe, S20FE 5G's battery saving settings are too aggressive and drop it down even when it's not sleeping. Are you on the latest update? Maybe they have fixed it? I tried to find similar issues but I don't see much similar issues.
 
phone came out of the box with september security update. i do understand throttling when the phone is sleeping. but it sure is annoying to have a phone stuck at 20-30mbps when you are actively using it with power savings disabled. and since this is not really a widespread problem, i have no way of finding out if it is consistent across all fe units or just a few like mine and the ones i have found online. i usually end up with devices with display issues. but having a device that would struggle on local data transfer is something that would be hard to get used to! my phone is how i troubleshoot router issues.

some of the links i found during the day.

 
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You should try your best to get it replaced. Best bet would be to make videos and share it with both Amazon and Samsung (wouldn't do anything most likely).

I don't think anyone should make such a major compromise. It's India, temperatures will always be high.
 
i can even live with slow speeds when the phone is charging and warm. even when it's cool, the wireless connection is just trash compared to s10 lite. wifi connection speeds are almost always lower (650 vs. 866). it rarely stays above 800mbps. sometimes it drops down to 6mbps which is supposedly normal during sleep as ishan mentioned but not when the phone is on lol.

i guess a replacement would depend upon the guy that comes to my place tomorrow. i mean if the guy is going to be like telecom support saying speedtest to theek aa raha hai dikkat kya hai to i guess no option but to live with this lol.
 
Offer some tea and snacks to the technician.

James Franco Flirt GIF
 
So it looks like i can ask for a replacement unit or refund. Can't decide. October patch has been released in Europe. Might take a few days to come to India. If this is a firmware issue, I do not have time to wait for the release of this patch. Not that this is expected to change anything considering the phone is already a year old.

It's frustrating that this is the only phone that I can think of buying right now. S21FE might come or might not. If it does come, it would be a long wait to get a decent price on it.
 
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