These last few days, the Samsung Galaxy Note 5 has been suffering from its own "Gate" scandal as some users realized that the S-Pen, the digital pen that is the primary selling point of the Note 5, gets stuck in its holding area when they put it in backwards.
The problem stems from a design flaw which Samsung seems to have overlooked while working on the S-Pen's holding bay. When users accidentally place the S-Pen in the wrong way, or when their children do not know how to insert the stylus in properly, the S-Pen gets stuck because is cap is hindered by a small piece of the detection sensor hanging out over the holding area.
Users, of course, could always yank the S-Pen out with enough force, but as one Redditor who just lost his $800 notes, doing so damages not only the S-Pen as its cap has popped off and left inside the S-Pen's enclosure but also the detection sensor, which is essential to enable certain features, such as phase detection autofocus for the camera and recognizing input from the S-Pen.
To make matters worse, Samsung is not actually helping its irate customers solve the problem, simply pointing out that it had noted in the Note 5's user manual that the S-Pen should always be inserted with the pointy tip first. Of course, it helps for users to pay attention to how they are using their expensive smartphones, but the odds for human error are high, especially since Samsung did not create enough resistance, such as a wider cap for instance, to prevent the S-Pen from getting inserted the wrong way up.
Fortunately, there is a way for you to get your S-Pen unstuck if you have accidentally put it in backwards and you don't want to damage your device by simply wrenching the S-Pen out. A video posted by YouTube channel How2Tech shows how simply using a piece of paper inserted into the S-Pen's holding bay can gently get the detection sensor out of the way and let you ease out the stuck S-Pen.
The fix is simple. You only need to cut a strip of paper around six inches in length with a width that can easily go around the curve of the S-Pen. Next, curl the paper around a pen so it can wrap around the small length of the S-Pen protruding from the holding bay. You then slide the piece of paper up the holding bay along the side of the S-Pen until it reaches the sensor near the end of the bay, then you can easily slide the S-Pen out without worrying about snapping something off.
Check out the video to see the demonstration in full.
