At the Galaxy Unpacked event last year, Samsung introduced Digital Key, allowing users to turn their smartphone into a digital car key. The feature relies on NFC and UWB to let you lock and unlock your car, start the engine, adjust seats, and more. At launch, the Digital Key feature only worked with a handful of vehicles from Audi, BMW, Ford, and Genesis. Now, Samsung is expanding the list of supported cars that can work with Digital Key.

As spotted by TizenHelp, Samsung's digital car key now supports several new cars, including Genesis GV90 and BMW's 1-8, Z4, X5-X7, iX, i5 and iX4 series. In addition, the feature now also works with Kia Niro. Out of all models, only the Genesis cars support both UWB and NFC. Other models only work with NFC.

Right now, Samsung's Digital Key is only available in South Korea, with no word from the company on the international availability. The feature only works with select high-end Galaxy phones, including the Galaxy S22 series, Galaxy S21 series, Galaxy Z Fold 3, Galaxy Z Flip 3, and Galaxy Note 20 Ultra.

Samsung's Digital Key is fully compliant with the digital key standard defined by the Car Connectivity Consortium (CCC). Samsung says your keys are securely stored in the embedded Secure Element (eSE). You can also share your digital keys with your friends and family and even set a time limit on how long you want to grant someone access to the shared keys.

While Samsung's digital key isn't available outside of its home country, users can instead try out a similar feature from Google in Android 12. Announced at Google I/O 2021, the Android digital car key is available on the Pixel 6, Pixel 6 Pro, and Galaxy S21 series and supports select 2020 and 2021 BMW cars. The feature is available in the US, UK, and select European countries.


Source: TizenHelp