The star of yesterday’s Samsung event was definitely the new Galaxy S21 line, but there were so many more smaller bits of news joining it. One such feature coming to the S21 and other Galaxy phones is Digital Key, which is basically Samsung’s answer to Apple's Car Keys, but with support for a wider range of devices, cars, and even houses.
A stylus looks cool in your hand (to say nothing of being useful) while sketching out a detailed drawing, but it's a lot less cool when it's sticking out of a charging port to juice up. The Universal Stylus Initiative want to change that with a plan to enable wireless charging for USI styluses — using the NFC technology found on many modern smartphones.
Paying via NFC with Google Pay is more convenient, safe, and hygienic than swiping a payment card through a seldomly cleaned payment terminal. These days, almost every flagship phone includes the NFC interface required for Google Pay to function. But that doesn't guarantee that tap-to-pay will actually work. Recently, issues have popped up on the Galaxy Note20 Ultra and the Pixel 5 — but it looks like this problem might be much more far reaching.
Google Pay continues to expand its support to additional international banks. To help you keep track of which financial institutions have added their credit and debit cards to the service, we've compiled a list of recent additions. Since we last looked in July, Google's added 24 new banks in 23 countries.
NFC payments are quick, easy, and less germy than swiping a card — but they aren't as widespread as one might think. Samsung uses magnetic secure transmission (MST) technology to make Samsung Pay available at almost any payment terminal around the world, even if the merchant doesn't support NFC platforms like Google Pay or Apple Pay. Now the people behind that tech are back with a new product that promises to simplify the payment process for everyone.
Yubico is praised as the maker of some of the best physical security keys currently out there, but the company isn't resting on its laurels. Today, it has announced the latest addition to its YubiKey 5 series, the $55 YubiKey 5C NFC. It can be seen as an advanced version of the regular 5C, and it's the company's first key to feature both USB-C and NFC, which might make it its most universal one yet when it comes to phones.
Google Pay support is ever expanding among financial institutions, and that's both the case in the US and the rest of the world. As such, we've compiled a list of the latest international banks that have added their credit and debit cards to Google's contactless payment service, coming in at a total of 25 institutions across 14 (mostly European) countries.
Xiaomi managed to impress everybody with its low-cost $30 Mi Band 4 that easily kept up with much costlier products from Fitbit, Garmin, and Co. (as long as you're not a swimmer, that is). Exactly a year after its introduction, the company has released a follow-up in the form of the Mi Band 5, packing a slightly bigger screen, a much-improved charger, more tracking capabilities, and a ton of new animated watchfaces.
This story was originally published and last updated .
If you're less than excited to whip out our credit cards or touch a PIN pad at the store, you're not alone: contactless payments are on the rise in America, especially right now. You might have heard about one or both of the major contactless payment providers on Android, Google Pay and Samsung Pay, but you might be familiar with what makes each distinct. While both do offer the same basic tap-to-pay NFC functionality, there are some differences in their ease of use, support for alternate contactless payment standards, and in the apps themselves. Here's how to figure out which one is best for you.
Wireless charging is great, but the large coils that are required for the Qi standard can take up a lot of space inside smaller electronics and increase costs. That's why products like smartwatches, fitness bands, wireless earbuds, and so on typically only support wired charging. However, there might be a new easier way to include wireless charging on low-power devices: NFC.