The Note 5’s new S Pen warning. Photo: J. Williams

Samsung has begun shipping its Galaxy Note 5 with new stickers that warn users not to insert their S Pen into the device upside down. The company hopes to ensure that new owners don’t make the same mistake many others have, which can lead to a broken smartphone.

This is the first Note that isn’t all about specs. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Android

After kicking off the “phablet” trend in 2011, the Galaxy Note series has become the bigger and better smartphone in Samsung’s lineup every year — and usually the best phablet on the market. But with this year’s Note 5, a lot has changed.

Samsung has snubbed a number of popular features to take a gamble on the new design language it first introduced with the Galaxy S6 earlier this year. It makes the Note 5 far prettier than its predecessors, but does it make for a better handset overall?

You bet your S Pen it does!

It’s not totally dead. Photo: UnlockRiver

Its all-glass and aluminum form factor makes the Galaxy Note 5 prettier but more fragile than its predecessors, so if you’re clumsy, you’ll want to keep yours in a case. And you definitely won’t want to drop it from 900 feet, because as you’ll see in the video below, it really doesn’t like it.

Once you get to this stage, you have a serious problem. Photo: Android Police

Unless you’ve only just discovered the Internet, you’ll already be familiar with an apparent Galaxy Note 5 design flaw that causes its S Pen stylus to become stuck when reinserted upside down.

Now a new teardown image reveals exactly what causes the expensive jam.

Samsung: Just use your S Pen properly. Photo: Samsung

We’ve already learned that it’s incredibly easy to do great damage to the Galaxy Note 5 simply by reinserting its S Pen upside down, and most regard this as a design flaw. Except Samsung.

Rather than promising to look into the issue or propose a solution, the South Korean company simply advises customers to read their Note 5 manual, and follow the instructions properly.