If You Have a Galaxy S6 Edge, DO NOT USE This Feature

I picked up my Galaxy S6 Edge on release day and have loved it ever since. Did I spend an extra hundred bucks for the mostly-aesthetic Edge display? Yup! Did I have buyer's remorse about my frivolous spending? Not even a little.

But lo and behold, I found myself at Best Buy this morning exchanging my device for another one. And since launch date, there have been countless Edge owners doing the same. Luckily the process was mostly hassle-free, but it's avoidable. So, if you have an S6 Edge, here's the one thing you can do to keep yourself from making a trip to the retailer or carrier store you purchased your device from—do not use the fast charger.

The Galaxy S6 Fast Charger Issue

Fast charging on the S6 is pretty incredible. Use your phone all day long, then plug it in for 20 minutes and you've got almost a full day's worth of juice ready to go. This is a major selling point for Samsung, as they had to use smaller batteries on the device to keep it nice and thin. But on Edge units, fast charging is causing a serious hardware issue that can not be remedied through software updates.

The problem stems from the heat caused by fast charging, and to put it in non-technical terms, it's frying the device's accelerometer, in turn causing device rotation to fail.

Computerworld obtained confirmation from Samsung of the issue, but at this point, the options for resolving it are non-existent.

What to Do if You Have This Problem

Sure you can call Samsung and go through factory resetting and various other software-fixes. But when hardware is the problem, there aren't solutions that can be handled over the phone. While most users are able to simply exchange their device for another, that doesn't mean the same problem won't happen again on the new one.

While some third-party apps can be the culprit here (namely restored backups of Nova Launcher), those cases are rare. Instead, use the device's built-in diagnostics test feature to see if hardware is to blame on your Edge.

Head to your device's Phone app and dial *#0*#, then select Sensor.

Previous SlideNext Slide

Now try moving your device around. If all three axes are responding under "Accelerometer Sensor," your device should be okay. Hit the Graph button for more details—again, look for changes on all three axes while moving and rotating your device. If any of them are stuck (my Y-axis was stuck, others reported their X-axis was stuck), then you've got some faulty hardware.

If your axes are responding fine but you're experiencing issues with rotation, that could be related to an app. Again, reports of this have been related to Nova Launcher, so you can try uninstalling and reinstalling the app without restoring a Nova backup configuration file.

How to Prevent the Problem

If your device isn't experiencing this problem or you already replaced a faulty one, you can try to avoid it happening to you (or happening to you again). Keep in mind that my device was fine for about 10 days before screen rotation failed, so just because you're good now doesn't mean it'll stay that way.

If your device is working properly, simply stop using the fast charger. Samsung can, and probably will in short order, issue a software update that throttles or limits the capabilities of the fast charger. While that will likely limit how fast it can charge your device, it'll be better than it frying your sensor. But until that update comes, do not use the fast charger.

Watch Out for False-Fixes

Just to drive home the point yet again: hardware issues cannot be resolved with software fixes, but that won't necessarily keep Samsung from trying. The last thing they want are droves of broken S6 Edge units, especially considering just how expensive they are to make. And as Edge owner Paul Waby discovered, a software "fix" ended up not being a fix at all.

Unable to return or exchange his device, Waby took to Twitter to air his frustrations, which resulted in him taking a software update to alleviate the rotation "bug." Now, take this with a grain of salt, but Waby states that all the fix did was utilize another sensor (most likely the gyroscope) to mimic the accelerometer. While that's fine in many cases, it's not really a fix to the problem at hand, and can still leave some functions broken (like Photo Sphere or Samsung's own Surround Shot).

Samsung wants to band-aid this problem ASAP, and they can do it by throttling fast charging. But if your sensor is already broken, you need to exchange your device for another one immediately.

Then once you have your new Edge, avoid using the fast charger until a real fix is issued. Use wireless charging or use a standard charger, and keep an eye out for any screen-rotation issues. Or of course, you can always exchange your Edge for the standard Galaxy S6, which does not have any such issues.

Was your Edge affected by this or any other issues? Let us know in the comments below.

Follow Android Hacks on Facebook or Twitter, or Gadget Hacks on Facebook, Google+, or Twitter.