NavIC has just been announced for commercial use and it’s already making news among the smartphone users in India. In case, you are unaware, NavIC is an indigenous navigation system developed by India and is supposed to become India’s GPS alternative. Smartphone users are asking if their existing smartphones will support the new technology or does NavIC require a hardware component. So to answer all these questions, we bring you a simple guide to check if your smartphone has NavIC support or not. Now without further delay, let’s go ahead.
Check if Your Smartphone Has NavIC Support
At present, very few smartphones support NavIC because it’s a new technology and essentially, a hardware component that needs to be implemented along with the chipset. That’s why even smartphones launched in the recent past don’t have support for NavIC. So far, Qualcomm has announced that only Snapdragon 460, 662 and 720G have onboard NavIC support. Also Snapdragon 765 is fully enabled with NavIC. So, if you are going to buy a phone, make sure it comes with any of these chipsets and then you are good to go.
In addition, Snapdragon 865 also has the NavIC tracking unit, but the service has not been enabled yet. Qualcomm clarifies that the implementation is under development and will be shipped to OEMs in April 2020. However, surprisingly, we found that Realme X50 Pro that comes with the latest Snapdragon 865 detects the NavIC satellites while being connected to a WiFi network. All of it is perplexing, but yeah, you can be sure that NavIC support will officially come to all 865 SoC phones post-April this year including the iQOO 3. Anyway, if you want to check if your smartphone has NavIC support or not then follow our two-step guide.
1. Install GPSTest (Free) or GNSSTest (Free) app on your Android smartphone. Both the apps are quite good and support the L5 band. To be sure about NavIC compatibility, I would recommend you to install both the apps and verify the satellites separately.
2. Next, tap on “Start Test” and the app will start detecting all the navigation satellites available on your location. If the app detects Indian satellites then it means your device has support for NavIC. Keep in mind, for better detection, start the test outdoors.
Find Out NavIC Support on Your Android Smartphone Right Away
So that is all from us. So far, as we saw, there are only a few smartphones with NavIC capability in India. I would recommend you to wait for future smartphone releases– preferably for the Realme 6 series and Redmi Note 9 — which in all likelihood will come with NavIC support. Anyway, that is all from us. If you were able to verify NavIC compatibility on your smartphone then do let us know in the comment section below.
Abubakar Mohammed
