The Samsung Galaxy S24 series is likely to feature satellite communications support, according to details reportedly shared by a company executive. According to a report from Sisa Journal-E (translated from Korean), Samsung Electronics System LSI Business Head Yong-In Park stated during a recent presentation that the South Korean technology conglomerate was preparing to bring support for satellite communications on its smartphones next year. Since the Samsung Galaxy S24 series of smartphones is expected to debut in the first quarter of 2024, these handsets will likely be the first to support this feature.
According to the report, the Samsung executive said that the company has already made preparations to support smartphone communications via satellite. Yong-In Park, who made the announcement at the Semiconductor Expo 2023, did not provide a timeline for enabling the functionality, nor did he reveal which phones would support the feature.
It’s worth noting that Apple announced support for communications over non-terrestrial networks (NTN) via its Emergency SOS satellite feature with the iPhone 14 series smartphones in 2022, and the company’s latest phones – including the iPhone 15 Pro Max – also support this function. . Earlier this year, Qualcomm announced Snapdragon Satellite support on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip, but the feature was not enabled on the Samsung Galaxy S23 smartphones.
On the other hand, Samsung’s own Exynos 5300 modem, which runs on the Exynos 2400 mobile processor, and on Google’s Tensor G2 (Pixel 7) and Tensor G3 (Pixel 8) chips, also supports NTN connectivity. Samsung has yet to reveal whether it will enable satellite communications support on its Exynos 2400 chip – expected to power the Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24+ – or on the recently unveiled Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip expected to power the top-end. line Galaxy S23 Ultra handset.
It’s also unclear whether Samsung’s Galaxy S23 series of smartphones – consisting of the Galaxy S23, Galaxy S23+ and Galaxy S23 Ultra – as well as the Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Galaxy Z Fold 5 will support emergency satellite connectivity. TM Roh, president and head of Samsung’s mobile experience division, previously stated that satellite functionality was still quite limited on smartphones and that it was too early to implement the feature on Samsung handsets.
