Samsung's new Galaxy Note 5 phone has a big design flaw

Samsung's new Note 5 phone has a built-in stylus that Samsung calls the S Pen. As soon as you pull the S Pen out you can start taking notes without unlocking the phone, or you can quickly sign a PDF and send it off. You can even write out your texts or emails instead of tapping the on-screen keyboard.

But Android Police has found that it is incredibly easy to insert the S Pen backwards into its slot, causing irreparable damage.

Previous Galaxy Note phones have come with a stylus too. But they only fit in their slot point first, or needed considerable force to push them in backwards, so you would immediately realise you were doing something wrong. But the new S Pen is the same size and shape for its entire length. Android Police found that the new S Pen slipped into its slot on the Note 5 blunt end first with little or no resistance, meaning that it could happen by accident. Once the pen went in far enough it jammed in the device, and the process of wiggling it out stopped the Note 5 from being able to detect it.

When Ars Technica tried to replicate the Android Police experiment it was eventually able to remove the S Pen and restore its functionality. However, it looks as though almost anyone could easily insert the S Pen into their Galaxy Note the wrong way up, and risk doing some major damage to its new functions.

We've reached out to Samsung for comment on the S Pen flaw and will include any updates in this article.