Recently, many Samsung phone users reported the problem of not being able to log in to the game Pokémon GO after they updated to One UI 5.1.1. According to reports on Reddit, X, and other platforms, users will receive the message “This account cannot be authenticated” when opening this game. Immediately, the support team of Niantic (Pokémon GO publisher) confirmed the problem and is investigating the cause of the above problem.
Based on reports, the majority of these cases are related to the Galaxy S21 series. However, some users of Galaxy Z Fold, S20, and Note series devices also encounter similar situations. According to SamMobile's test, they tried opening Pokémon GO on Galaxy Z Fold5 - a device with One UI 5.1.1 pre-installed right from the factory, and it still worked well without any problems. Therefore, this news site concludes that the above problem only affects devices newly updated to One UI 5.1.1.
Currently, Samsung and Niantic have not released any official information about the release of a new update to fix the error. However, some users have found a solution by clearing the cache and data of the Google Play Store, Google Play Services for AR, Google Play Services, and Google Apps. If users do not want to encounter errors when playing this game, consider updating to One UI 5.1.1 before this issue is fixed.