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Comment by gary_0 | Hacker News Reader

Because phones aren't allowed to have bezels anymore for some reason, I'm constantly hanging up on people because there's no room for a proximity sensor to turn off the screen so my cheek presses the "hang up" button. It tries to use the front camera as a makeshift sensor, but it doesn't work very well.

Recently I reacted with incredulity when the people on the other end could properly hear me through a newly-connected Bluetooth device -- it's more jarring to me when this stuff doesn't fail.

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Same happens to me with the mute button. It also seems hard on newer phones to find a position where the speaker is clear - shift it by a millimetre and now you can’t hear anything. The phone is so big that holding it completely still for a long call is uncomfortable. People ask why everyone holds the phone out and uses the loudspeaker now, well…

Worse yet, the "muted" and "not muted" states of the button are visually distinct when looking at them side-by-side, but if you just see one in isolation, you'd be hard-pressed to determine which it is. Gotta poke it a few times to see it change, you know?

That's not problem of a bezel, but either crappy software or bad sensor, never happened to me through 11+ years of using Android phones with touch screen.

Better choose decent phone next time, mind sharing what phone causes you this trouble?

Samsung Galaxy S10e (with recent software). It wasn't cheap. And all my previous Android phones were fine too, but this one only has the little hole in the screen for the camera. There is no sensor.

Not sure if the device really is the issue here. I've the same phone, it costed me $600 when I bought it 3.5 years back. And till date, it's the best phone I've owned: not too big, headphone jack, expendable storage, physical dual sim, capable cameras and Touch ID that's located just right. Importantly, I've never had issues that you mentioned (dropped calls or Bluetooth glitches for that matter) I use this phone (S10e) every single day for calls and music etc. In fact, I'm typing my response on it now

What I mean to say is - there's a very high chance that your device is broken.

You may be using different software version, maybe they fixed it. It was very popular model, I really doubt if it had such serious issues it would not be fixed.

I found guy reporting it as software issue: https://www.reddit.com/r/galaxys10/comments/bzv9oq/proximity...

though other says it's faulty design https://www.reddit.com/r/galaxys10/comments/d94ob7/proximity...

Samsung recommended to return the phone, some people had luck with changing Touch sensitivity settings and Accidental touch protection https://piunikaweb.com/2019/03/18/samsung-galaxy-s10-proximi...

possible to test it here to see whether it's hardware or software issue https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/the-proximity-sensor-is-n...

But considering not all people have this problem it's either software error, software setting or some batches had hardware issue or they fixed the design.

Return the phone, it's broken

There's no way Samsung made a phone with no proximity sensor

.. well, then again, they did make the Note 7.. https://youtu.be/0IVk8PsSgEI

I know it's not using a proximity sensor because the front camera turns on when it's trying to fake-proximity-sense. I also know what a proximity sensor looks like (I've worked with such sensors for my job), and there isn't one. It's just a bad design; form overrode function.

S10 series should have under screen proximity sensor, so there is no way for you to see it unless it lights up during function, it's white flashing LED

https://nasilemaktech.com/samsung-galaxy-s10-series-proximit...

are you using samsung phone app or 3rd party app? see my other comment with links how to resolve it

I do sympathize with users who have to distinguish between the kind of brokenness that warrants returning the phone, and the kind of brokenness which is simply the norm in this space.

S10e definitely has a hw proximity sensor under the screen, but Samsung also adds infos from touchscreen to complement this sensor. I used a s10e and loved it, but not on Samsung sw and I never did calls so I can't say much about it.

Huh, I just switched out my s10e after a few years and I never had this issue. It didn't even occur to me that the face-detection method had changed.

I have an S10, literally never had an issue with this

I have an S10, literally did. So which anecdote wins?

The point is parent's generalization is wrong because it's either caused by faulty hardware or software issue, but it's not widespread problem across all new (Android) smartphones, just because you and him experience this issue.

Also just throwing my hat into the ring, writing this on a S10e. It's not perfect, but I don't have any issues with the sensors, no ads, and it generally just works about as well as any other phone I've used.

Circa 2012, top 60% of an Android call screen was unresponsive to touch and never had phantom touches. As the buttons creeped upward, I get phantom mute, hold and even hangups.

My father's phone had the same problem (some HTC abomination), but with the mute button rather than the end call button. I'm not sure if it was due to cheek contact with the screen or some gyro sensor thinking that the phone was flipped upside down, but during a call the phone would randomly mute its microphone.

Yes. It is either Hang up, Mute, or Worst, suddenly on speaker phone so the sound would blow up my ear.

There are many other aspect of "calling" that has gotten worst, including call quality, codec and signal etc. My thinking is that no one calls anymore and no one gives a damn about phone calling.

I still remember I used to buy Motorola Phone just because of their Crystal talk.

Personally I think it was two things reinforcing each other:

On one side, a natural decline in people using the phone (replaced by texting/apps)

On the other side: the cell companies no longer “encumbered” by laws around landline reliability, cramming ever more phone calls in to the same amount of bandwidth

The cell companies could have the clearest call quality by a wide margin, if they chose to. TBH, (and I know I’m an outlier) even though I talk to people for maybe 5 hours a month, I would still switch providers to one that offered call a quality equivalent to being in person

> suddenly on speaker phone so the sound would blow up my ear.

This being so bad is a phone design issue that goes beyond the touchscreen.

Well designed phones have two microphones and speakers, so when in speakerphone the top becomes the mic and the bottom the speaker, preventing deafening people in the event of an accidental switch.

This is one of the reasons why I always let the phone hoover a couple of centimeters from my face when talking to someone. Utterly ridiculous!

This is the way you are meant to hold a phone anyway. In the manuals it states this (e.g apple says 5mm-15mm from your head). This is to reduce SAR.

What is SAR?

https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/specific-absorption-rat...

Summary: Specific Absorption Rate - how much RF energy your head is absorbing.

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