About 90% of the time, my Samsung Z Flip 5 sets off shop alarms. I’ve tested this by taking my phone out of my pocket and walking back through. It is definitely my phone.
I haven’t kept a log of the theft detectors I’ve set off, but I don’t believe it was happening when I first got my phone. This leads me to believe I’ve made some change in the software that is setting off the theft detectors.
I’ve done some cursory googling and it seems like some other people have had the same problem with other phones, but I can’t find a solution as to how to stop it. It’s not a particularly bad problem, just an annoying one that gets me the occasional odd look.
Here are some things I’ve tried and specific details.
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I’ve tried switching off Bluetooth and NFC. No change.
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It’s set off alarms from a range of stores, but I haven’t been particularly scientific. Some examples of specific stores are:
A. The Warehouse. This is a department store
B. Kmart. Another department store
C. Woolworth’s. This is a grocery store.
I plan to keep a better log of detectors I’m setting off in the future, and I’ll be going to kmart this afternoon so I should be able to try any solutions people present.
Recently the battery in my mom’s Samsung S10e expanded like a balloon, enough to pop the glued-on back panel off of the phone.
While replacing that battery, I noticed the coil in there to facilitate wireless charging looked like a slightly larger loss-prevention sticker.
It’s possible that if your phone has a similar coil, it’s responsible.
The magnet idea from another post might help, as magnetically charging/aligning the coil might change how it interferes with the signal from the loss prevention scanners. (run one pole of a magnet in the same direction over the coil multiple times to magnetize it, similar to how you’d magnetize a screwdriver)
Another thing you can try is getting an EMF or RFID blocking phone case. Hopefully the case will prevent the coil from interacting with the loss prevention signal, thus preventing it from going off.