NavIC has just been announced for commercial use and is already making news among smartphone users in India. If you don’t know, NavIC is a native navigation system developed by India and is expected to be India’s GPS alternative. Smartphone users are asking whether their current smartphones support new technology or whether NavIC requires a hardware component. To answer all these questions, we provide you with a simple guide to check if your smartphone has NavIC support. Now, without further delay, let’s move on.
Check If Your Smartphone Has NavIC Support
Very few smartphones currently support NavIC because it is a new technology and essentially a hardware component that should be implemented along with the chipset. For this reason, even smartphones released in the recent past do not have NavIC support. Qualcomm has so far announced only Snapdragon 460, 662 and 720G have built-in NavIC support. Also, Snapdragon 765 is fully enabled with NavIC. So if you’re going to buy a phone, make sure it comes with any of these chipsets and then you’re good to go.
In addition, Snapdragon 865 also has NavIC tracking unit, but the service is not yet activated. Qualcomm explains that the app is in development and will ship to OEMs in April 2020. But surprisingly, we found that the Realme X50 Pro, which comes with the latest Snapdragon 865, detects NavIC satellites when connecting to a WiFi network. This is all confusing, but yes, you can be sure that NavIC support will officially come to all 865 SoC phones, including the iQOO 3, after April this year. Anyway, if you want to check if your smartphone has NavIC support then. Follow our two-step guide.
1. Install GPSTest (Free) or GNSSTest (Free) app on your Android smartphone. Both apps are pretty good and support the L5 band. I recommend installing both apps and verifying satellites separately to ensure NavIC compatibility.
2. Then tap “Start Test” and the app will start detecting all navigation satellites available in your location. If the app detects Indian satellites this means your device has NavIC support. Remember, start the test outdoors for better detection.
Find NavIC Support on Your Android Smartphone Now
So that’s it from us. As we’ve seen so far, there are only a few smartphones with NavIC in India. I recommend waiting for future smartphone releases – preferably for the Realme 6 series and Redmi Note 9 – which will likely come with NavIC support. Anyway, that’s it for us. Let us know in the comment section below if you were able to verify NavIC compatibility on your smartphone.
