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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Got the replacement unit. Did not use cloud restore. Instead used Samsung Smart Switch which uses local network. Phone did not get too warm. Ran WiFiMan app and noticed the exact same behavior of fluctuating Wi-Fi connectivity speed. Factory fitted screen guard is in worse shape than the first unit which means I am not going to use the phone till it is clear if I am stuck with it or I can get a refund. Got a call from Amazon Support as a followup from yesterday. Told them that I got the replacement but it has the same issue. The guy on the phone told me that I would have to go through the technician visit as they cannot process refund right away. So the second cycle of harassment begins.
 
got the refund processed. lady on phone was very nice. did not even ask what the issue was. i was literally like.

Joe Biden Reaction GIF by Election 2020
 
Good riddance.

I miss the time when we were getting flagships under 50k. My friend's OnePlus 7 Pro is still going strong.
 
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I bought this from samsung's shop.. I have already seen so many threads on these issues that now I am wondering if I should cancel it before it's delivered. samsung will likely be a much bigger pita than Amazon in terms of getting a refund if I receive a faulty unit and don't want to put up with it anymore
 


if you end up with an older unit, it might turn out to be fine. i have seen so many varied responses. without samsung acknowledging this issue which they should on their support forum, one would never know if they would fix this issue in a monthly patch update. it's a year old phone. which would still get updates for around 3 more years i believe. so it could happen this month or next year. or it could never.

one could try contacting one of the high profile tech bloggers and ask them to ping the company about this and get an update.
 
The OnePlus 9 RT rumored to arrive on October 15 was expected to run Android 12-based OxygenOS 12 out of the box, making it one of the first smartphones to boot the latest version of Android. However, reliable tipster Digital Chat Station says that won't happen since the 9 RT will run Android 11 out of the box with ColorOS 12 on top.
Would be a better buy than both the Samsung Galaxy S20 FE 5G and OnePlus 9R. Though the rumoured price is too good to be true.
 

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