Samsung Launches Its Second-Generation Tracker, the Galaxy SmartTag2, with Atmosic ATM3325 Inside
Next-generation tracker for keys-and-more uses Atmosic’s ultra-low-power BLE system-on-chip and brings new NFC, UWB capabilities too.
by Gareth Halfacree at Hackster.IO
Samsung has announced its next-generation Galaxy SmartTag2 trackable, which is powered by the ultra-low-power Atmosic ATM3325 system-on-chip — delivering, Atmosic claims, a 43 percent reduction in power consumption compared to the company’s first-generation Galaxy SmartTag.
“Atmosic’s SoC helps Samsung to offer an extended battery life in our latest SmartTag2,” says Samsung Electronics’ Jaeyeon Jung, head of the company’s SmartThings division. “With Atmosic’s innovative technology, we are able to improve our environmental impact as well as our customer experience through extended battery life.”
Samsung launched the original Galaxy SmartTag tracker back in January 2021, using a combination of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and Ultra-Wideband (UWB) connectivity to track the location of devices to which it’s attached. A built-in button gave the tags a second feature, as programmable remote controls for Samsung SmartThings-compatible smart home systems.
The SmartTag2, unveiled this month, brings a range of new features including an improved compass view when paired with UWB-capable Galaxy smartphones, a new Lost Mode in which data loaded onto the tag can be read over a Near-Field Communication (NFC) link, and improved power saving. This latter feature, Samsung says, couples with the reduced active power draw of the Atmosic ATM3325 to push long-term tracking capabilities to 700 days — twice that of the first-generation version.
Atmosic launched the ATM33 series of ultra-low-power systems-on-chips back in January last year, offering a single-core Arm Corex-M33F processor running at up to 64MHz, 128kB of RAM, 512kB of non-volatile storage, and up to 64kB of ROM, plus a Bluetooth 5.3 Low Energy (BLE) radio. The launch-model ATM3330 was joined by the ATM3330e, which integrated energy-harvesting capabilities to increase battery life still further — offering up to five times the runtime of its competitors, the company claimed at the time.
The Galaxy SmartTag2 is now available, priced at $29.99, on the Samsung webshop.