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mathrawkayesterday at 8:55 PM4 repliesview on HN

Pixel phones outside of Japan are missing the Felica chip.

Apple pays the fee for all phones in the world to have the chip. Google only pays for Japan devices.


Replies

xingpedyesterday at 10:05 PM

As far as I could tell from everything I've read from multiple sources, every Pixel since Pixel 4 _has_ the chip, it's just not enabled and you can enable it with rooting.

https://xdaforums.com/t/global-pixel-device-unlock-felica-su...

makeitdoubleyesterday at 10:51 PM

The chip is not missing, the configuration is.

I assume it's a licensing issue, where Google is too cheap to pay JR for the phones sold outside of Japan, so only setup the JP models and only pay the license for those.