Almost every new Android gadget these days (smartphones, tablets etc) and win 8 devices now come equipped with a NFC chip. And still some people ask, “what is it? what purpose does it serve?”
Well, NFC stands for Near-Field communication and is built around RFID (Radio frequency identification) standards working on a frequency of 13.56MHz. I always say its a smaller version of RFID. Meaning NFC’s range consist of a max of 4cm, while an RFID can go up to 100feet in range. IT was founded in 2004 by a bunch of high profiled Tech leaders (Nokia,Sony, Phillips etc) under NFC Forum to help standardize the technology.
NFC allows two way communication and one way communication between devices/objects. An example of one way communication is NFC tags. These tags are unpowered and are activated when in contact with a NFC device. Tags store small amounts of data and when activate your NFC phone device will read it and execute the command. Its most common use is to automated certain tasks.
Things I’ve done with NFC tags:
– I have one on my car dashboard that disables WIFI, and enables Bluetooth, my music app and turns up the volume on my phone.
– one on my night stand that puts my phone into airplane mode and turns on my alarm settings
-NFC tag wristband that has my website stored to share to others
-computer Time in/time out program with swipe badge (based on the arduino NFC library)
These are done through my Android device through an app called NFC Task Launcher off the play store. A very simple to use app to program your tags.
NFC two way communication is what seems to be having a harder time get recognized. This form of communication is when two NFC devices are talking to each other. It’s current most common use is to pair two Bluetooth devices together without going through Bluetooth’s settings. aka Android Beam . Other method is contact less payment. Although services like Google wallet, Visa’s PayWave, Mastercard Pay-pass etc. exist NFC terminals in stores are still lacking to make this a common pay method. Until this is a common practice I also don’t see Apple ever implementing it onto their Iphone, which to me is the main reason why it doesn’t have it.
