That's me in front of a smart poster.

 Near Field Communication (NFC) is often handled as one of the most promising technologies of the mid-term future. Through contactless and at the same time simple data transfer using RFID – combined with a high security storage of encrypted data in the smart card (e.g. the SIM-card of the mobile phone) – it enables several new and exciting usage scenarios and improves the comfort of many existing areas. With this posting, I’d like to share some insight about the current state of NFC.

NFC-Trial

One of the world’s first NFC-trials is currently running at the University of Applied Sciences in Hagenberg, Austria. 100 students and teachers (including me) got an NFC-enabled phone and can now use it for various services that are evaluated through usage studies and surveys. The goal is to measure the acceptance and use the input for improving the current ideas.

The trial is still running, but when talking to the project managers, they already reveal some of the first results. It seems like micropayment is one of the main killer applications for NFC – especially the coffee machine is the place where everybody wants to use their phone for quick payment, instead of having to carry around lots of coins or special chip-cards.

Another result is that speed is very important. An info-terminal that can synchronize the phone with the latest news and menu plans from the local gastronomy is a great idea, but data transfer is just too slow. NFC only works well if everything happens instantly – “touch & go”. Downloading a video through NFC by holding it to a smart poster for half a minute (as seen in the otherwise very interesting NFC video from Nokia) won’t be a great experience. If bigger data should be submitted, it would be better to use NFC to create another data connection, like seamless Bluetooth pairing.

Development

The Nokia 6131 on the pad of the NFC info terminal.

At the moment, only four mobile phones are available:

• The pioneer phone: Nokia 3220
• SAGEM my419X
• Samsung SGH-X700N
• The new Nokia 6131

Especially the new phone from Nokia is ahead from the competition and does already contain a thoughtful implementation of some standards that are partly not even yet standardized. Exactly this is also one of the major things to take care of during development – through the lack of finished standards, it’s not really possible to let the Samsung and the Nokia-phones communicate with each other. However, the JSR 275 (Contactless Communication API) is set to change this situation.

Another aspect that’s often overlooked in the early stages of development is battery consumption. For early adopters, it might not be a big issue if they have to charge their phone every second day. But when I was talking to “normal” students about the advantages of Smartphones about a month ago, they said that they really wouldn’t want a phone where the battery has to be charged so often. For example the NFC-phone from Samsung only lasts for two days. This is something where the clam-shell design of the new Nokia 6131 comes in handy, as it is by default (when it’s closed or switched off) only in passive mode, while it only activates the active mode when the phone is opened. In my opinion, this is an important fact when NFC should go mainstream.

More Information

If you’d like to know more about NFC or the trial that’s currently active in Hagenberg, take a look at http://www.nfc-research.at/. On this website you’ll also find the program of the upcoming NFC Applications Conference, a very interesting event with high-profile speakers talking about NFC technology and its future applications.

In the NFC Trial, the mobile phones can also be used to access the labs and the parking garage.