Government of India is pushing phone makers to enable support for its local NavIC navigation system on smartphones they will sell in India from Jan 1, 2023, reports Reuters.
NavIC (Navigation with Indian Constellation) is the operational name of the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) developed by the Indian space agency ISRO for military and commercial purposes. Its constellation is made up of eight satellites and covers the Indian mainland and the region extending up to 1,500 km from its borders.
According to the report, the Indian government wants smartphone brands to adopt NavIC on their devices as it wants to reduce dependence on foreign navigation systems such as US GPS and Russian GLONASS, in line with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Atmanirbhar Bharat. : India self-sufficient) campaign.
In a press release, the Indian government said NavIC (meaning sailor or navigator in Indian languages) is “as good as the US GPS in terms of location accuracy and availability in its region of service” and is based on Foreign navigation systems operated by defense agencies of respected nations raises concerns for strategic sectors as there is a risk of withdrawal or denial of service in a given situation. This is something India learned the hard way during the Kargil War between India and Pakistan in 1999, when the United States denied India’s request for GPS data, prompting it to develop its own navigation system.
Relying on foreign navigation systems also entails a risk of degradation or denial of civil services.
Realme X50 Pro was the first smartphone with NavIC support
The source says the Indian government had private meetings with Samsung, Xiaomi, Apple and a few others in August and September to push brands to implement NavIC in smartphones they will sell in India from January 1, 2023, but the brands they pushed citing concerns about rising research and manufacturing costs to make their devices NavIC compliant.
Making the devices NavIC compliant would also require more testing permissions, which, with a January 1 deadline, could disrupt their planned launches.
Samsung’s Indian executive Binu George reportedly told Indian officials that NavIC support requires many other components in addition to new smartphone chipsets and hardware design changes. It’s unclear what changes exactly are needed as several chipsets, including Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC, already have NavIC support. Even some smartphones such as the Xiaomi 12S Ultra available only in China are NavIC compatible.
Adding NavIC support to smartphones is a key concern for brands like Xiaomi and Samsung which are strong in the sub $ 200 category in the Indian market due to the higher cost of dual-band chipsets they would need to support NavIC and GPS. in the world second smartphone market.
Reuters reports that smartphone brands have been looking until 2025 for the implementation of NavIC and we should expect a final decision in a few days.
However, responding to this report, the Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) said that no timeline has been set to make smartphones in India NavIC compatible within a few months. The ministry also said that the aforementioned meetings were consultative and the matter is still under discussion with all interested parties.
A media report said it cited a meeting where mobile devices were asked to make smartphones compatible with NavIC within a few months. This is to clarify: (1) No timeline has been set. (2) The aforementioned meeting was consultative; and (3) the matter is under discussion with all interested parties.
– Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (@GoI_MeitY) Settembru 26, 2022
According to ISRO, there were around two dozen NavIC compatible smartphones in India by mid-2021, while Counterpoint said there are a total of around 300 smartphones in India with NavIC support. Realme’s X50 Pro was the world’s first phone with NavIC.
Our database includes over 100 smartphones with NavIC support. You can check them out here and send us a suggestion here if there is a NavIC compatible phone that we have not included. You can also check NavIC support for your Android device by downloading apps like GPSTest and GNSSTest from the Play Store.
Apple’s iPhones currently don’t have NavIC support, but that may change in the future.
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