Samsung Electronics has confirmed it has an NFC version of its Galaxy Note, though that comes as no surprise to operators in South Korea, which have been selling the tablet-smartphone hybrid with NFC inside for about two months.
Samsung this week offered its own dissection of the LTE version of the device on its official blog, which noted the Galaxy Note has an NFC chip with antenna embedded in the back cover. Samsung pointed out that NFC could be used for “close-distance communication, allowing users to use the phone like a credit card or transportation card.”
South Korean operators, led by KT and SK Telecom, are using the Galaxy Note for these applications and others and sold 250,000 of the NFC-enabled Android devices within a month of putting them on sale, as NFC Times reported earlier this month. The Korean telcos are selling the LTE version of the Galaxy Note. It’s part of the more than 5 million NFC-enabled phones and other devices the Korean telcos sold through the end of 2011, including more than 3 million of Samsung’s flagship smartphone, the Android-based Galaxy S II.