Another technological advance that lacked practicality and staying power.
Samsung Galaxy chip confusion halts bonking plastered apps
Samsung's Galaxy S4 flagship mobile can't grok data transmitted by stickers sold by Samsung to eager app makers. Electronics embedded in the labels fire out pre-programmed information when a compatible wireless NFC chip comes within range, and work with Samsung's Galaxy S3. But a new NFC chip in the S4 is incompatible with …
-
-
-
-
-
Thursday 2nd May 2013 17:10 GMT ratfox
Re: Selling point
Yes, but do these Bluetooth apps know precisely which device you just bonked? Or do they display "we have scanned the surroundings for bluetooth devices and found three cell phones, two laptops, a television set, a pair of headphones and a sound system, which is it you wanted to bonk again?
NFC seems to have solved this particular problem tight. So far I have never been able to use Bluetooth without a device selection screen.
-
Friday 3rd May 2013 07:26 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Selling point
If they have a directional bluetooth antenna they do.
NFC "solves" the problem by being so short range (assuming you follow the spec and use low power) that if the G sensors detect a "bump" odds are high that the only thing you see is the thing you bumped. Try bumping a S3 against a second S3 with a third S3 a half inch away from both that bumps into something else and see if it is as guaranteed as you think it is, or it is only an artifact of NFC's shorter range as compared to bluetooth.
This argument is rather like saying that wifi is superior to LTE because if you're on a given wifi network one can narrow down the location of a phone much better versus being on a particular LTE cell tower.
-
-
-
-
-
Thursday 2nd May 2013 13:44 GMT Simon Rockman
The problem with automating things is malware
When an S3 sees the NFC sticker it automatically opens the web page. If you were unscrupulous you could fill that page with malware. if you were really unscrupulous you could transmit the NFC signal at way over the specified power and every Android NFC equipped phone in range would become a target.
Windows mobile asks before obeying an NFC signal.