NFC App, Tag and Samsung Galaxy S® III Tec Tile

[#1]

Powered by Android™ 4.0, the 4G LTE Samsung Galaxy S® III arrives with Near Field Communications (NFC) technology. NFC allows you to share small payloads of data between an NFC tag and your device. Also, NFC enables devices to share information at a distance less than 4 centimeters with a maximum communication speed of 424kbps. There is a broad potential for NFC applications, it’s a disruptive technology that a developer should pay attention to.

An NFC app can be embedded within an NFC tag (NFC smart sticker) that will enable people to do tasks with their phones. For example, in Google play, there is an NFC app “NFC Task Launcher” that will enable a device to switch the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth setting on or off by tapping on an NFC tag when arriving or leaving home. It’s a simple task automation app and people like it.

Samsung wants everyone to know about NFC technology. Their way of educating the consumers is through Tec Tile tags. Using Samsung’s Tec Tile app, Tec Tile NFC tags can be both read and write.

Some technical details about Android NFC technology:

• During an NFC data exchange, the NFC Data Exchange Format (NDEF) is used. Android framework APIs support sending and receiving NFC data in the form of an NDEF message.

• The Simple NDEF Exchange Protocol (SNEP) allows an application on an NFC enabled device to exchange NDEF messages with another NFC enabled device. The protocol makes use of the Logical Link Control Protocol (LLCP) connection oriented transport mode to provide a reliable data exchange.

• Android Beam allows simple peer-to-peer data exchange between two NFC enabled devices. The NFC device that is receiving the data must support the com.android.npp NDEF push protocol or  SNEP. The com.android.npp protocol is required for devices on Android 2.3 (API Level 9) to Android 3.2 (API level 13). Both com.android.npp and SNEP are required on Android 4.0 (API level 14) and later.

• The Android Application Record (AAR) was introduced in Android 4.0 (API level 14). An AAR has the package name of an application embedded inside an NDEF record. You can add an AAR to any NDEF record. Android searches the entire NDEF message for an AAR. If it finds an AAR, it starts the application based on the package name inside the AAR. If the application is not present on the device, Google Play will be launched to download the application.

Read my blog about HTC One X NFC here.

[#2]

Very informative!