Simply place your mobile phone in your pocket to unlock your front door. This is a new feature available through the Samsung Wallet app.
An increasing number of people are leaving their homes with only their phones, needing nothing else; our entire lives, both digital and real, reside on our smartphones. Now, Samsung Wallet will allow us to do without one more thing: house keys.
Samsung has announced its adoption of the Aliro standard for smart locks, and thanks to this, the Samsung Wallet can now store and unlock the digital keys to our doors using various technologies.
Aliro comes from CSA, the creator of Matter, the smart home standard that is adopted by the entire industry; therefore, in a very short time, it has become essential for smart lock manufacturers.
It is not surprising that Aliro is an open standard that any manufacturer can support without having to pay anything, and it ensures compatibility between different brands of devices, even if they are part of competing smart home systems.
Although the Samsung Wallet app was already compatible with digital keys, it was previously only available with specific car models from brands like Volvo and Toyota. With the addition of compatibility with the Aliiro lock, this app could become one of the most frequently used in our daily lives, especially if we have a compatible lock.
Once we add the digital keys for our smart lock to the Samsung Wallet, we can use our phones to unlock the door in different ways, depending on the lock's capabilities and compatibility.
At best, we won't even need to take our phones out of our pockets, thanks to Ultra Wideband (UWB) technology that can detect nearby compatible devices; all we have to do is approach the door, and it will unlock automatically.
While this idea may seem far-fetched, Samsung assures that it's completely secure; the keys are stored on the Samsung Knox security platform, and access to the Samsung Wallet can be locked using a biometric fingerprint or PIN. Access can also be managed remotely using the Samsung Finder app, even if the device is lost.
This technology is also compatible with Near Field Communication (NFC) technology, but in this case you will need to take your phone out of your pocket and bring it close to the lock, just as if you were paying in a store.
This home key feature will be available in the Samsung Wallet app starting in March in some regions and will be rolled out globally gradually from now on, in conjunction with the launch of compatible smart locks.