Following up on last year’s launch of the Galaxy A Quantum, South Korean telecom operator, SK Telecom will be launching another phone packed with quantum security features in South Korea later this month.
Known as Galaxy Quantum 2, this new phone is the second from Samsung that uses a quantum random number generation (QRNG) chip to provide for enhanced security of the users’ data. This Quantum 2 QRNG chip developed by Swiss company, ID Quantique (IDQ) is considered to be the world’s smallest at a size of 2.5 mm by 2.5 mm.
The Galaxy Quantum 2 phone is expected to improve the security of a large number of services on the phone due to the native integration of the QRNG chip into the Android Keystore.
ID Quantique has been working with SK Telecom since 2016 on quantum cryptography and other applications in the arena of telecom and internet of things. Last year, in the middle of the pandemic, they launched the world’s first quantum-enabled 5G smartphone. This, the Galaxy A Quantum phone, was the first mass market application of quantum technologies in the telecom space.
Founded in 2001 as a spin-off of the Group of Applied Physics of the University of Geneva, IDQ provides quantum-safe network encryption, secure quantum key generation and Quantum Key Distribution solutions and services to companies and government organisations across the world.
SK Telecom had made an investment of $65 million into ID Quantique in February 2018. The following year, the company applied IDQ’s Quantum Random Number Generator (QRNG) to its 5G authentication center (AuC) to avoid hacking.
IDQ’s quantum random number generator has been validated according to global standards and independent agencies, and the company claims that it “is the reference in highly regulated and mission critical industries – such as security, encryption, critical infrastructure and IoT – where trust is paramount.”
IDQ’s QRNG chips depend on the special quantum mechanical properties to create truly random numbers without the known biases of the existing random number generators.
