Samsung deploys NXP tech in its Galaxy Note20 Ultra, bringing first UWB-enabled Android device to market
11 August 2020

NXP Secure UWB deployed in Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra_580x280
Samsung’s new Galaxy Note20 Ultra smartphone features NXP’s industry-first solution to combine UWB fine-ranging, NFC, Secure Element & eSIM. UWB technology delivers unprecedented accuracy for ‘relative-location’ in crowded, multipath signal environments with numerous walls, people & other obstacles, enabling first-of-its-kind spatially-aware applications.
NXP Semiconductors has announced that its Secure Ultra-Wideband (UWB) fine-ranging solution and embedded SIM (eSIM), as well as (in selected devices) its Near Field Communication (NFC) and Secure Element (eSE) unit, are deployed in Samsung’s new Galaxy Note20 Ultra smartphone. These NXP technologies are designed to help bring a variety of future capabilities and applications to mobile devices, as they increasingly become the smart hub of our daily digital lives – including end-to-end solutions for a myriad of security applications, via NXP’s mobile wallet, such as NFC-based payments and mobile ticketing, eSIM, and first-of-its-kind spatially-aware applications, enabled by UWB.
Propelling today’s on-the-go lifestyle with secure mobile solutions, NXP tethers consortia and ecosystem collaborations to ironclad industry alignment around UWB. NXP and Samsung are two of the founding members of the FiRa Consortium, which was established in 2019 to foster interoperability in the development and widespread adoption of UWB technologies. NXP’s ultra-wideband (UWB) technology enables secure ranging and precision sensing, creating a new dimension of spatial context for wireless devices.
“For the first time in a Galaxy device, Samsung is integrating NXP’s UWB technology into our latest Galaxy Note20 Ultra to make sharing photos, videos and files easier,” said Inkang Song, Vice President & Head of Technology Strategy Group of IT & Mobile Communications Division at Samsung Electronics. “We are excited to introduce future UWB functionality in our Galaxy devices that will help locate items more accurately with AR technology, and unlock your home as a digital key that will make life easier for consumers.”
UWB technology delivers unprecedented accuracy in both line-of-site (LoS) and strong localisation in non-line-of-sight (nLoS) scenarios, such as crowded, multipath signal environments with numerous walls, people and other obstacles. It also uses angle-of-arrival (AoA) technology to indicate the direction of a signal for added precision, and to locate and identify other devices or objects at centimetre level. With that, Samsung’s utilisation of UWB in its latest Galaxy Note20 Ultra smartphone mobile device brings users powerful tools to help maximise their time and simplify their daily routines.

NXP SR100T UWB solution_580x280
“NXP offers a comprehensive suite of UWB chipsets that span best-in-class security, automotive, IoT and mobile architectures for real-time, precise localisation capabilities across market applications; this has never been more important, with mobile devices driving the digitisation of identities, so people can interact contactlessly with the world around them,” said Rafael Sotomayor, Executive Vice President & GM, Connectivity & Security at NXP. “In addition to UWB, eSIM is also a new use case enabled in our mobile wallet, that provides connectivity options beyond traditional SIM.”
A robust solution for the future of mobility
• Completely hands-free access control: The unparalleled precision sensing of NXP’s Secure UWB technology includes outstanding localisation that will make it possible for mobile devices to communicate with connected doors, points-of-entry and cars (as a 'digital key') for completely hands-free access control.
• Simplified integration: Building on NXP’s NFC connectivity, mobile ecosystem expertise and proven security architecture, found in many of today’s popular mobile payment-enabled devices, UWB can be part of a system that quickly and securely initialises communication. With NFC onboard, devices can continue to perform contactless transactions even when they ran out of battery.
• The next generation in connectivity: Unlike traditional SIM cards, that must be removed and replaced in new devices, NXP’s GSMA-compliant eSIM solution is integrated permanently into a device, making remote SIM provisioning radically easier and providing over-the-air SIM updates. The external SIM slot plus eSIM allow end users to have two or more phone numbers on a single device. The eSIM functionality comes with all Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra devices (excluding China, Japan and Korea).
Learn more about NXP’s SR100T UWB solution at: www.nxp.com/uwb
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