nRF54L15 power increase caused by NFC read from Android Phones

RE: nRF54L15 power increase caused by NFC read from Android Phones

Kazi Afroza Sultana — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 09:53:15 GMT

Hello Ben,

It is mentioned here that issue is fixed on the NCS v3.2.1.

source: Known issues

RE: nRF54L15 power increase caused by NFC read from Android Phones

Kazi Afroza Sultana — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 09:53:14 GMT

Hello Ben,

It is mentioned here that issue is fixed on the NCS v3.2.1.

source: Known issues

RE: nRF54L15 power increase caused by NFC read from Android Phones

bvyates — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 19:59:15 GMT

Hi Kazi,

I was wondering if you would be able to confirm whether or not these fixes had propagated to a new NFC release. I do see some mention of the nRF54L MCU and NFC in the Nordic HAL library version 4.0.1 (link), but we're not sure if this covers all the patches that were suggested previously.

Running NCS version 3.2.1 (with Nordic HAL 4.0.1), should these nRF54 NFC power issues be resolved?

Let me know if I should open a new DevZone issue to get this confirmation.

Thanks,

Ben

RE: nRF54L15 power increase caused by NFC read from Android Phones

joey — Thu, 20 Nov 2025 09:36:42 GMT

HI，I am also using the NFC functionality of SDK 3.0.0 and encountered this issue. How can I add the patch to my project?

RE: nRF54L15 power increase caused by NFC read from Android Phones

Kazi Afroza Sultana — Thu, 09 Oct 2025 09:09:24 GMT

Hello Ben,

I am glad that it solved your issue.

We will sure let you update about this in NCS future release.

Thanks.

Kazi

RE: nRF54L15 power increase caused by NFC read from Android Phones

bvyates — Thu, 09 Oct 2025 00:24:05 GMT

I was able to apply these patches to our project. I also added the devicetree and configuration bits to enable timer24, which was required to build successfully with the patches.

With those changes, the problem appears to be resolved! I performed an NFC tap with two different Android phones 50 times each and never encountered the problem with power consumption increasing. Previously without these changes, the power issue would occur on every tap. The issue seems to be resolved then with the workaround enabled by the patches.

Please let us know if these changes are expected to progress into an NCS release in the future.

Thank you for your help!

Ben

RE: nRF54L15 power increase caused by NFC read from Android Phones

bvyates — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 16:21:21 GMT

Hi Kazi,

Thank you for the information. This issue, NCSDK-34404, does sound similar to what we were seeing. Apologies that we had not yet had a chance to attempt replicating the issue on a nRF54 DK. We will try out these patches though and see if it changes the behavior we are seeing.

Thanks again,

Ben

RE: nRF54L15 power increase caused by NFC read from Android Phones

Kazi Afroza Sultana — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 06:47:37 GMT

Hello,

Can you try to apply this patch solution and try to measure the current again?devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../7607.nrf_5F00_nfc.patch

devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../8750.hal_5F00_nordic_5F00_nfc.patch

devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../7607.nrf_5F00_nfc.patch

However, it is a temporary fix. It worked for one case (sample: writable_ndef_msg) to reduce the current consumption.

RE: nRF54L15 power increase caused by NFC read from Android Phones

xht1987 — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 01:57:24 GMT

Thank you, I look forward to your reply and hope this problem can be solved soon.

RE: nRF54L15 power increase caused by NFC read from Android Phones

Kazi Afroza Sultana — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 12:12:21 GMT

Hello,

It seems a known issue Known issues.

NCSDK-34404: Possible increased current consumption in NFC applications on the nRF54H20 and nRF54L devices

If your application uses NFC on the nRF54H20 and nRF54L SoCs, the current consumption may remain high even after the NFC field is lost, due to the running high-frequency peripheral clock.

I will ask team if the issue is fixed or not and will come back to you.

RE: nRF54L15 power increase caused by NFC read from Android Phones

Kazi Afroza Sultana — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 12:31:24 GMT

The system_off sample should consume approx 1uA with the default configiration. With disabled RAM retention you can even get less that this, like 0.8uA.

Add the follwoing code at the beginning of main() function to disable the RAM retention

NRF_MEMCONF->POWER[0].RET = 0;
NRF_MEMCONF->POWER[1].RET = 0;
NRF_MEMCONF->POWER[0].RET2 = 0;
NRF_MEMCONF->POWER[1].RET2 = 0;

RE: nRF54L15 power increase caused by NFC read from Android Phones

xht1987 — Fri, 19 Sep 2025 03:04:25 GMT

NCS3.0.0, The same NFC code was not reproduced when we tested it on 52840, but it was easy to reproduce on 54L15. The power consumption was directly measured with a power analyzer.

RE: nRF54L15 power increase caused by NFC read from Android Phones

Kazi Afroza Sultana — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 13:41:34 GMT

Hello,

Which NCS version you are using?

How have you measured the power? Have you tried to run any samples from the NFC (for example \nrf\samples\nfc\system_off) and measure the power?

RE: nRF54L15 power increase caused by NFC read from Android Phones

xht1987 — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 02:10:39 GMT

We also encountered the same problem. When the phone saw the device power consumption increase at the extreme distance of NFC, it was easy to move the phone away. This problem was triggered on both Android and iOS. We added a log in nfc_callback to troubleshoot the problem and found that it would not enter nfc_callback at this time. The device maintained a high power consumption, which increased from about 4uA to about 400uA-600uA. When the NFC was refreshed again, the NFC function was normal, but the power consumption did not recover.