by kevmo314 3 days ago
Is this an Android thing? My US iOS works fine with digital Suica.
Apple doesn't make regional variants of the phone, so all models have the technology built-in, even if it's disabled by default. Android phones outside of Japan lack Suica support.
And Pixel phones have the tech, but you need to flash a Japanese ROM to be able to use it.
Ahh interesting. I wonder why they (non-Apple) did that?
Suica uses the Sony FeliCa NFC standard (which predates the international NFC standards) which they charge a license fee per device for.
Apple has the margins to just pay the license fee for every iPhone, Android makers try to keep their costs down more.
There's a chip required for it that they cheaped out on.