February Galaxy S21 security patch reportedly causing battery life issues

A good number of Galaxy S21 owners complain about poor battery life on Reddit and a few other forums, and the February 2021 security patch that started rolling out last week could be the culprit.

All customer complaints are from people who own the Exynos variant, but it should be noted that the problem is most likely with the software rather than with Samsung’s new hardware. And according to some users, the battery could be draining at an accelerated rate due to a cellular connectivity issue. According to affected Galaxy S21 owners, battery life falls within normal settings when flight mode is on.

There seem to be a lot of complaints about the Galaxy S21 and Galaxy S21 +, in particular, when the Galaxy S21 Ultra is barely mentioned. Unfortunately, we cannot confirm exactly how this issue occurs and whether it affects the Galaxy S21 Ultra, as none of our Exynos powered Galaxy S21 models have been affected by this issue.

As mentioned in our Galaxy S21 + review, the battery life isn’t extraordinary, but it’s decent. The Galaxy S21 Ultra left a much more positive impression with surprisingly good battery life even with 120Hz on. The base Galaxy S21 model, however, has an average battery life that fails to impress.

Samsung is aware of the issues and is working on a fix

Samsung is apparently aware of these unwanted symptoms affecting the Galaxy S21 series after the update, and according to the Norwegian tech blog Tek.no, the company is working on a new firmware update that should resolve the issues.

The company hasn’t revealed a timeframe, but it’s possible the upcoming March 2021 security patch will fix these new battery life issues, assuming a fix won’t be released sooner. For now, we advise Galaxy S21 owners to avoid the February 2021 security patch if possible until the issues go away.