Samsung Galaxy S21 Back or Home buttons unresponsive after One UI 4.1 update; black screen, missing shortcuts, & other issues reported

Here’s the crux of the article in video form:

Original story from March 23 follows:

Last year, Samsung updated their Galaxy S series with the Galaxy S21 lineup. Launched in January, it consists of three devices – Galaxy S21, Galaxy S21 Plus, and the Galaxy S21 Ultra.

That being said, Samsung recently updated the lineup to One UI 4.1 based on Android 12. But now, many Samsung Galaxy S21 series users are saying that the back and home buttons are unresponsive after the update.

If you thought the problems end here, device owners added that their phones are getting stuck on a black screen with some complaining about missing shortcuts amongst other issues (1,2,3,4,5).

Here are some reports from Samsung Galaxy S21 series users who updated their devices to One UI 4.1.

I just updated my phone earlier today OneUi 4.1 And it basically made my device unusable .The home button and back button will not work whatsoever. I feel the vibration feedback for the button but it will not work it will not work if I enter any apps I have to close them through the Open apps page. When I restart the device I’m only getting a black screen and I have to again go to the open apps page and close everything to get to the homepage and most apps will not even open when they do I cannot put any touch input and I cannot exit out of the app using the home button.
(Source)

Updated to 4.1 and lost Home Button and Back Button functionality. This did not resolve itself until I performed a factory reset. I’ve never experienced issues with Samsung updates until this one, so I was surprised that it caused an issue as major as this. Luckily Samsung’s backup feature is great, so I managed to get up and running right after the reset.
(Source)

While Samsung is yet to acknowledge any of these issues, we came across a workaround that seems to be helping some Galaxy S21 users for whom the back and home buttons are unresponsive. You can follow the steps in the image below.

We hope the developers soon acknowledge and work on fixing the issues affecting Samsung Galaxy S21 users that surfaced after the One UI 4.1 update. If and when they do, we will let you know so stay tuned.

In the meantime, make sure you check out our One UI 4.0 and One UI 4.1 bug tracker to see similar issues affecting Samsung users.

Note: We have more such stories in our dedicated Samsung Section so be sure to follow them as well.

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