I recently found out that there appears to be more than one version of the Samsung Galaxy A14 being shipped and distributed throughout the UK. This has caused confusion and anger for many because it appears that not every variation supports Near Field Communication (NFC), a feature required to perform contactless payments directly from the smartphone device.
You may be asking yourself, “Why are there different variations and how can you tell whether you have the right model that supports NFC?” Great, because in this article we will give you the answers to this question.
Sticking with the 4G versions (although the same applies for 5G variants too) Samsung UK reports that the A14 does indeed support NFC, you can check out the specification here. However, it appears that some of the A14 variants shipped by other companies in the UK do NOT support NFC. Looking at a series of Amazon reviews also shows that many people have received Samsung Galaxy A14 devices that have no NFC support, leaving them disappointed.
To add to the confusion, companies such as those selling through Amazon often advertise the device with NFC support but that’s not always the case as I found out. I ordered a Samsung Galaxy A14 4G device from a company called Snatch Deal Limited on OnBuy and expected it to have NFC support but to my surprise it didn’t. I then ordered the same device from Argos who also advertise the device as having NFC support and after testing this device, I found that it does indeed have NFC support. So, how can you tell the difference?
It’s hard, especially if you don’t know what you’re looking for, but the easiest way would be to first confirm with the seller that the device does support NFC. If the seller confirms that the device does support NFC then you could further clarify this once you’ve received the device by checking the device settings for NFC. To do this navigate to Settings > Connections and you should see the setting ‘NFC and contactless payments‘. If this setting is not there then your device doesn’t support NFC and there is no way to enable it.
Other ways to identify whether you have the correct A14 variant would be to check the model number of the device. You can do this by checking the ‘About phone‘ section of the phone in the settings or if you have the phone box handy then you could simply check the box.
There are a few different Samsung Galaxy A14 variants as shown here. Based on my testing I can confirm that model SM-A145R-DSN does have NFC support. I can further confirm that model SM-A145F/DS does not have NFC support. Now, without dissecting each model and what the letters mean, my research suggests that models vary based on the country and the models that don’t have NFC are designed for countries that don’t utilise NFC. With that in mind, it would appear that some companies are selling non-UK or non-NFC versions of the device in the UK for the same price as the original (NFC version). With that said, if you’ve just purchased a Samsung Galaxy A14 and it doesn’t have NFC support then I would suggest that you return the device and purchase the correct model that does support NFC (even if you don’t intend on using it).
Some other notable difference I picked up with the packaging were the following:
- The NFC supported Samsung A14 – SM-A145R-DSN has a slightly bigger box even though the content is the same
- The NFC supported Samsung A14 – SM-A145R-DSN has a Samsung PO BOX in Dublin which further suggests that these devices are for the UK and Ireland markets whereas the non-NFC A14 – SM-A145F/DS didn’t have this as shown in the images below
Leave a comment and let me know if you’ve run into this issue or if you’ve noticed anything else worth mentioning with the Samsung Galaxy A14.
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