Transformer Prime WiFi and GPS signal issues may be traced to poor internal connectors
The Asus Transformer Prime seems to show up in the news as much for being broken as it does for being awesome. WiFi and GPS issues have plagued it from the start, causing the tablet to not be able to lock on to any GPS satellites and also losing WiFi connectivity very fast when moving away from the router. Lisa at MobileTechReview spotted something in Anantech’s teardown of the Prime that made her test a theory on the subject that has turned out to work for a lot of people.
The Prime uses something called pogo plugs on the inside to connect parts of the tablet together, namely form a connection to the antenna. These plugs are spring loaded to be able to properly connect parts of a device together with simple pressure rather than wires and such, making the whole assembly process much simpler. These plugs seem to not connect properly on a lot of Primes though, causing the tablet to essentially not have any contact with the antennas. The fix is to squeeze along the top of the tablet (hard enough to where the LCD starts showing signs of pressure, but not hard enough to break anything) to make sure that anything that can be squeezed together is done so properly. Several people including Lisa herself has reported that this has instantly fixed both GPS reception and WiFi signal strength, although the Prime is still not exactly top of the line when it comes to reception.
A simple fix, but to a problem that shouldn’t be there. This is nothing but a build quality issue, and that’s perhaps the last thing a company wants its top of the line device to be known for. The Prime is still an awesome tablet, but the way this is going, people might give up on it eventually. And if a $499 tablet is as poorly put together as this, I don’t even want to know what sort of issues Asus will introduce with its upcoming $249 tablet. Perhaps they should make superglue an official Asus accessory sooner rather than later.
[MobileTechReview]
