The era of the digital car key has finally arrived

The idea of ​​using your phone or smartwatch as a car key has been around for some time, and some – usually more expensive – vehicles are already equipped to let you do so. However, the implementation has been extremely inconsistent between car brands and sometimes even requires certain phone models to work. Until recently, the necessary software was not even preset in the devices, meaning that you would need a third-party app to lock and unlock your car.

All of that is changing though. At Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference last summer, he showcased a new Car Keys protocol that integrated the functionality into the iOS Wallet app, in the same place where your credit cards are stored. However, to date, the company has only partnered with BMW to deploy it.

Today, Samsung unveiled its new Galaxy s21 range of smartphones and, like Apple, it also integrates digital key hardware and software directly into its phones. Unlike Apple, the Korean tech giant has announced collaborations with Ford, Genesis and Audi, as well as BMW, to bring the feature to more makes and models “in the near future.”

It’s not just the willingness to work together that makes digital car keys more accessible – hardware also plays a role. Previously, digital keys relied entirely on a technology called near-field communication, or NFC. NFC is the way you can pay for things by touching your phone on a payment terminal; it is also the basis of those beacons that you can buy and stick around your home so that, for example, when you put your phone on your bedside table, it will automatically trigger an alarm.

NFC is an incredibly simple and convenient technology, but it requires almost physical contact to work. Most of the time, that’s fine – you don’t want to inadvertently pay for someone else’s shampoo while you’re at the checkout at Target. However, a newer protocol called Ultra Wideband (UWB) improves NFC by providing extremely precise communication over short distances. Automakers and tech companies believe this makes it a good choice for unlocking car doors.

At today’s Samsung Galaxy Unpacked event, where he showed off his new phone, Samsung’s Kevin Chung described how unlocking with UWB would go. “You will be able to unlock your car door with your phone,” Chung said. “The door will unlock when you reach it – neither sooner nor later.”

In other words, if your phone is in your bag or pocket, you won’t have to take it out and slap it on the handle to get in. At the same time, you can rest assured that your car will also not unlock when you are halfway through a parking lot.

Operating system-level digital key integration will allow you to share your key with friends and family when needed, and Chung stressed that this will extend to users of all phones “regardless of the location. brand or platform ”. This last point is huge and signals an industry-wide shift towards common practices for this feature, which will help it reach more cars, more devices, and ultimately more people.

Apple and Samsung are part of an organization called the Car Connectivity Consortium, along with Hyundai, General Motors and Volkswagen, among other automakers. The consortium has developed a standard, called Digital Key 3.0, which cements the use of low-power UWB, NFC and Bluetooth technologies for digital keys of all makes and models of gadgets and cars.

UWB chips are found in a growing number of popular phones, including the iPhone 12 and iPhone 11 series and Samsung’s Galaxy Note 20 Ultra, in addition to the already mentioned S21 line. However, NFC is still the basis of current digital keys, as UWB is still quite new to the scene.

BMW is one of the automakers leading the shift to UWB. He confirmed yesterday that the BMW iX will feature the key next-generation technology when it goes on sale at the end of the year. According to the company, this will not only be more convenient than NFC-based digital keys, but also more secure:

[UWB] is a short-range, high-bandwidth digital radio technology that features exceptionally precise location with the greatest possible security. The accuracy of the UWB also ensures that relay attacks, where the radio signal is scrambled or intercepted, are not possible.

The promise of being able to use your phone as a car key has been a long time coming, and it has already arrived for the lucky few. But now that the world’s two biggest phone makers are fully on board and automakers are working with them to craft a common standard, it might finally catch on for the rest of us.