Nokia Does an About Face, NFC Phones to be Available in 2011

Nokia has decided that that their next-gen smartphones expected in 2011 will be equipped with NFC. Just in case you’re not very well versed with mobile jargon, NFC stands for Near Field Communication. You can take that in a literal sense as that’s pretty much what it means. Smartphones equipped with smartcards will be able to read data off of anything equipped with NFC transmitters.

Imagine if you will, you’re in a supermarket and you’re looking for cereal and as usual, there’s no attendant to help you, NFC transmitters could be placed strategically around the store for you to simply place your smartphone near to get data. The data could not only contain info about which isle the cereals are but also the kinds of cereal in stock as well as what’s good for you.

If you’re traveling abroad and a Map or information counter contains an NFC transmitter, you could capture the data onto your handset about places to see, local transport details, schedules of the same and more. The limitation of NFC, if you can even call it that, is that you’ll be required to place your device within 4 inches of the transmitter. The good thing is data can be transmitted within this short range extremely fast so there’s no standing around waiting like with Bluetooth, as fast as that is. 

The technology is still a work in progress. Bar Code Scanners and such have already made it to the mobile segment and these apps allow your device to read data off of a barcode on a product that can provide description, pricing, company contact information etc. about said product.

As of now devices with this technology are few and far between. Nokia had plans to launch their 6216 Classic this year that was NFC compliant however they had apparently canceled the launch for whatever reason and now they’ve done a complete about face with the announcement that their 2011 product list would include NFC enabled devices. Go figure. The 6216 was announced way back in April of 2009 and then again in 2009, but it didn’t quite seem to make it out, in one piece anyways. Perhaps third times a charm.  

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