NFC – Near Field Communication

Near field communication (NFC) is a set of standards for smartphones and similar devices to establish radio communication with each other by touching them together or bringing them into close proximity, usually no more than a few centimetres.

So, ever since I got my Nexus I’ve been keenly interested in doing something with this NFC feature.

I saw it in the Nexus S, and was mildly interested, but it’s been growing and growing… or my interest in it at least has.

ya, I won a jacket from Moneto when I wanted to have some support in Canada

The ability to transfer from device to device is something I’ve seriously missed from my old Palm days (remember IR sending?).  Sure there’s Bluetooth, or even some of the wireless options I showed recently, but nothing quite like some simple ‘touch’ interface.  (ok… bump, there, I included it).

Unfortunately true, native support of ‘Wallet’ has been lacking in Canada (sure, there’s a work around, but I hate having to fool something like a credit card company), and there are several emerging options coming out (see my photo above), but it’s just not coming fast enough.

But that has to do with just paying for something… (something we hear that 71% of Canadians are ready to do wirelessly) there so much more that you can use NFC to do.  Sending files is one of the neat things that the new Galaxy S3 will be allowed.  Currently we can only ‘beam’ specific things to other NFC enabled devices (webpages, play store app links, etc…).  But there are a bunch of ways you can set up the NFC to act as a ‘trigger’.

We’ve seen these before with the Sony ‘tags’.  The idea is that the tags are used like ‘locale’ did … where a GPS position would trigger certain actions.  You need the tags and then the Sony app.

Samsung wants to help grow this interest in NFC by also providing similar functionality with their new TecTiles.

It’s really an interesting concept.  And I’m really intrigued at increasing the efficiency of my phone with them.  I’ve noticed that there’s a lot of untapped potential in our daily phone use.  And this might be a way to extract every little ounce out of it!

One example for me is when I bike to work, I like to keep stats and data on everything, and have downloaded Endomodo for that, but I forget to turn it on when I bike.  Keeping a tile on the handle bars I could set it up to ensure that GPS is on, BT is on and connected to the headset, Play Music is ready with a playlist and Endomodo is turned on and starting to log.  Then tap it when I’m done and it turns off Endomodo.

Sounds simple!

I haven’t done it of course, but I’m excited to try!

How about you?

Have you used the NFC on your device yet?  What do you use it for?  I want to hear your best case examples!

Personally I hope the tech for NFC becomes so cheap that it will become synonymous with QR codes (please let those things DIAF), so that they can be on billboards or shop windows, or even product display cases.  So much potential.