Following up our first hands-on of the new BlackBerry Bold 9900, we re-visited the experience room at BlackBerry World to get a closer look at some of the first touchscreen Bold's features. In this video we take a look at NFC. This is the first BlackBerry Smartphone to support NFC, or Near Field Communication, which is a short-range wireless technology (4cm or less) that allows two devices to communication - there's always an initiator and a target. On a device like a BlackBerry, that can mean a few things... like bringing the phone close to a poster to launch an action like downloading an app, or pairing accessories together, or even making wireless payments. RIM is committed to NFC so expect to see a lot of progress here over the months and years ahead as you start using it for more and more things.
Be sure to check out the video above to see NFC in action! Big thanks to Annu for the demo!!
Reader comments
NFC Video Demo on the BlackBerry Bold 9930!
YAY BLACKBERRY BOLD 9930! :)
The Playbook should have NFC... talk about some extra tablet-to-smartphone communication.
LOL...I was thinking the same thing about touching the screen.
#awesome
RUN Kevin, RUUUUUNNN!!!
That is sick.......
RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN KEVIN!!!
kevin your on video dude don't do it..... lol very cool phone i want one so bad
So it has a built in RFID reader? Isn't that what this technology is or did I miss something?
You could say NFC is a modified version of RFID.
Yeah, I can only HOPE that this is out when I'm ready for an upgrade or should I say I'm ready for an upgrade when this thing comes out!!
Hey Kevin is gonna be the IOU Bold, lol....can't wait since T-Mob officially announced they're getting it...
I don't know much about NFC but is it "always on" or do you have to turn it on every time? Also, does it use up a lot of battery power?
It is not always on because I think it use a magnetic field. No, you do not need to turn it on and off, and partially it is always on, but not technically. From what I read, it use magnetic field lines and when it cross pass with another field line on the paper/document/poster, it turn itself on and read the information.
I may be wrong, but I hope that's what going on here because I don't want always on system which eventually MAY cause health issues down the road.
This could be seen adding to apps like the one Starbucks put out a while back, but this would be the 4th attempt at widely integrating NFC. Lets see if it takes off this time.
I hope that the owner can disable/switch off the NFC. Why? I forsee unscroupulous people sticking NFC enabled ads and scams under coffee shop tables and all sorts of other places just to get you to buy/view/try their product. If direct debitting ever becomes available, and it will, this could become a source of financial scamming.
i jz wonder, will this function available for all new models with OS7 or jz only bold touch..? cz i would like to have bb touch or torch II...can someone tell me..? TQ
gogogogogoggogogogogog KEVIN.
thats a really cool new feature they have on this phone... wonder if they gonna have this for the torch 2?
Please bring the BB Touch to T-Mo with compatability on all bands for AT&T and T-Mo!
Can you find out about blackberry to blackberry NFC, e.g contact sharing? Does this need to be turned on? How does this work?
All this tech is nothing new but what I love is how RIM is perfecting it and implementing it, something Android has failed to do so far.
Really nice feature/video
So I'm not too sure how this tech works. But could people use the with business cards? So you hover your phone over it and it goes into your contacts?
If I understand correctly, only if the business card were specifically engineered to interact with NFC technology. Standard cardboard business cards would not work. As an above poster stated, it has something to do with magnetic fields(?) I'm not entirely sure myself how it works though.
I'm not sure if this has been discussed before, but what if RIM capitalized on the NFC technology to really streamline the business experience? So in a sense, your BlackBerry phone itself would become a business card, and by holding it near another BlackBerry/smartphone device, the owner of the other phone would have the option to download your contact information? RIM could event take it a step further and allow people to choose which details to share with others, i.e. the standard info on a business card (name, email, cell/work numbers, company, etc.) or expand it to social info (BBID, email addresses, social networking account names, etc.). All of this information would automatically integrate with your contacts, calendar (if necessary), BBM account, Twitter, Facebook, etc. and save you the trouble of inputing the information yourself.
I think I remember something about there being an iPhone App that did something similar when you bumped two phones together, but this would somewhat different. What do you guys think?