According to industry sources on Feb. 22, Samsung Electronics chose Flexible Printed Circuit Board (FPCB) antennas to be used for the Galaxy S6. FPCB antennas have only been used as NFC antennas, since their product performance is inferior to Laser Direct Structuring (LDS) antennas. Moreover, an additional production process is necessary to make FPCB antennas.
LDS antennas are made of thermoplastic resin using lasers to draw a pattern and plating copper and nickel on the surface of the material. It is easy to design and modify patterns, and therefore they have widely been used as the main antennas for mobile devices, in tandem with the expansion of 4G LTE,48 which have a lot of broad band frequencies.
However, FPCB is widely acknowledged to be a next-generation material for main antennas thanks to the improved performance and technological advances, as LDS antennas have problems with space design and electromagnetic interference in a metal case.
FPCB antennas do not adhere to ferrite sheets for electromagnetic shielding, either. Shaped like a sticker, they are smaller and made with a thinner metal material than NFC antennas. Compared to LDS antennas, FPCB antennas are cheaper to produce without any problem in product performance.