Cases Effect Carrier Data Results on S21 #GalaxyS21CaseGate

[myn]

FYI if you're having less than expected Carrier Data performance, try taking off your case.

My wife and I both have the same base S21's on the same shared Data plan but with different cases. Our Speed Tests are dramatically different.


She is using the Samsung Silicone case and gets 100mbit down / 23mbit up.

i'm using the Samsung clear case and getting 24mbit down and 7mbit up.

Upon taking off my case I was getting the same performance as she was.

Curious to see if other variants of the S21 (plus and ultra) exhibit the same issue.

I hope a future Samsung software update may be able to help us with this issue.

 

[It_ler]

Good question
It may depend on the individual case, if it is thick or thin and its material/what it is made of.
Most cases should be made so that it does not decrease the reception/connectivity significantly ... hopefully

 

[robnitro]

S view case, no difference in speed. Try hers in your case

 

[Claghorn]

I did a speed test yesterday with no case, and just now with my new Otterbox defender. Yesterday I got 147 and 4.71 on 5G and 122 and 5.94 on wifi. Today I got 80.8 and 0.80 on LTE (which is odd, since the status bar said 5G while I was running the test) and 98.9 and 5.04 on wifi. If it wasn't such a pain to take the case off, I'd do that and try again .

More results: With the Otterbox defender case on the phone the speedtest app never says 5G, it always says LTE. Without the case, I consistently am able to do 5G tests (though the speed is really variable, but that's probably T-mobile). With my new VANMASS case, results are the same with and without the case. With both cases, wifi results are essentially the same. So Otterbox seems to hate 5G.

 

[dmodl712]

One thing to keep in mind is the orientation of the phone, the receivers are directional for the most part. Could you have held a phone elsewhere and done the test with case on. Then after you realized the discrepancy, you probably placed both the phones in the same orientation on a table for example, and then done the caseless tests together.