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Help NFC (Near Field Communication) Discussion

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excav8ter

Android Enthusiast
Hey all...... so I have read a few posts that mention NFC. But I am not sure what it is. Can someone tell me what it is, what it does and how it can help me?

Thanks
 
excav8ter said:
Hey all...... so I have read a few posts that mention NFC. But I am not sure what it is. Can someone tell me what it is, what it does and how it can help me?

Thanks
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IT stands for Near Field Communications and is a chip that is in the back of the phone and can be used for various applications. With Google Wallet you can set up your credit card/debit card to work with it and at certain vendors you can tap your phone on the pay pass readers to pay for goods. It can also be set up to read rfid tags that you can program to launch various tasks such as a home tag which turns on wifi, changes ringtone, launches a certain app or whatever task you can think of. Vendors also could set up advertisements that when you tap it could launch special promotions or discounts. You can also tap other nfc phones together to share content like websites and contacts. I think Google apps is talked bump or tap I cannot remember

NFC in Mobile phones is still in its infancy right now but expect it to grow over the coming years. I would think by 2015 you would be able to pay for goods at almost any retailer and you will see alot of kiosk and advertising with it as well. Really the sky is the limit with NFC and I am interested to see what people come up with over the next few years.

If you would like more information I found a couple links. '

Wikipedia page

Engadget Article
 
I believe (without knowing for sure) that I'll be able to use NFC to pay for New York City cabs with my phone -- which is going to be amaze-balls because as anyone in NYC knows, your cellphone is almost always out and having to juggle one less thing in a cab, like your wallet, is one less thing that is going to be left behind in a cab.
 
I ordered a set of five from Tag For Droid last night. The tags are about the size of a quarter and have the Android logo on them. I'm going to put one in my car for setting up car mode and then setting up home mode when I get out. Gonna put another one in my house for guests to access my wifi without me having to give them the password.
 
suprmallet said:
I ordered a set of five from Tag For Droid last night. The tags are about the size of a quarter and have the Android logo on them. I'm going to put one in my car for setting up car mode and then setting up home mode when I get out. Gonna put another one in my house for guests to access my wifi without me having to give them the password.
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Tag for Droid - is this a website? Linky? :D
 
To have one of these on the desk in the kitchen just inside the garage door where we hang the keys to enable WiFi and disable Bluetooth & GPS then another one on the other side of the door in the garage that enables Bluetooth & GPS and disables WiFi would be AWESOME! It would save me a lot of effort to be able to just wave my device near it and keep walking.
 
My tags came today. Writing to them with NFC Task Launcher now. Very easy to use.

However, unless there's a workaround I don't know about, apparently neither NFC tags or Tasker can activate or disable GPS without root. What kind of funny business is that?
 
suprmallet said:
My tags came today. Writing to them with NFC Task Launcher now. Very easy to use.

However, unless there's a workaround I don't know about, apparently neither NFC tags or Tasker can activate or disable GPS without root. What kind of funny business is that?
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That's too bad if true, although at the same time, I'm not sure why one would need to bother. The GPS function on Android phones is known to not consume any power when not actively being used, so disabling/enabling GPS is a non issue in my view.
 
Really? I assumed leaving any radio on when not using it would drain battery. If I can leave the GPS on without battery drain then I'll definitely do that.
 
suprmallet said:
Really? I assumed leaving any radio on when not using it would drain battery. If I can leave the GPS on without battery drain then I'll definitely do that.
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Nope, unless an app is using the GPS it's effectively off w/o needing to do anything. Bluetooth & WiFi are always searching for signals when they're not connected. That's why turning them off when not in use saves battery life.
 
Though BT and Wifi scanning requires very very little power to scan. So you don't actually save that much juice by disabling when they are off. Not saying it's not worthwhile (everyone values battery life differently) but there are much bigger fish to fry when it comes to hogging power.

These tags sound really interesting. I'll definitely check them out when I get a phone that supports it.
 
novox77 said:
Though BT and Wifi scanning requires very very little power to scan. So you don't actually save that much juice by disabling when they are off. Not saying it's not worthwhile (everyone values battery life differently) but there are much bigger fish to fry when it comes to hogging power.

These tags sound really interesting. I'll definitely check them out when I get a phone that supports it.
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Without getting into a debate about how much battery is used ANY battery use for something you're not using is unnecessary. Especially with something like these tags you can make turning things on or off an automated task.
 
novox77 said:
Though BT and Wifi scanning requires very very little power to scan. So you don't actually save that much juice by disabling when they are off. Not saying it's not worthwhile (everyone values battery life differently) but there are much bigger fish to fry when it comes to hogging power.

These tags sound really interesting. I'll definitely check them out when I get a phone that supports it.
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The last time I personally took a look at this (which was a while ago so forgive me), each WiFi and BT antenna was consuming 10% each of the given power consumption during pure idling over 3G.

20% of idle was enough to me to convince me to turn the radios off if I knew I'd be out and about in town for a while.
 
I've now set up a tag to both put my phone in car mode and disable wifi, then the same one will disable car mode and wifi if I scan it a second time.

Put one in my living room so guests could connect to my wireless network without giving them the password.

And I'm putting one in my office to enable and disable tethering when I get to and leave work.

Still have two left, I'll have to figure out cool things to do with them.
 
NeoteriX said:
The last time I personally took a look at this (which was a while ago so forgive me), each WiFi and BT antenna was consuming 10% each of the given power consumption during pure idling over 3G.

20% of idle was enough to me to convince me to turn the radios off if I knew I'd be out and about in town for a while.
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Given that I leave Wifi and BT radios on 24/7, and I get 1% battery drain every 2 hours when phone is on standby, I'd say that whatever battery life required for these radios to stay on is negligible. However, if your personal observations differ, then by all means, shut them off when you know you don't need them. I do this with 3G all the time. And 3G hogs a ton of power, especially if your signal strength is poor.

So with these tags, I assume you need to bring your phone within inches of proximity for the NFC to trigger, correct?
 
suprmallet said:
My tags came today. Writing to them with NFC Task Launcher now. Very easy to use.

However, unless there's a workaround I don't know about, apparently neither NFC tags or Tasker can activate or disable GPS without root. What kind of funny business is that?
Click to expand...

Where can I buy these?
 
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