Google Delivers Gingerbread Update–Adding Minor NFC Enhancements
An update to Google’s latest Android operating system, Gingerbread, is now reportedly available, offering some added NFC functionality, though not yet card emulation.
The update, available Monday, reported tech blog and review site TechCrunch, enables users to not only tap their phones to read NFC tags–which they could do now, if any tags were available–but also to write to the tags as well.
The new feature means people could create their own tags, encoding them with information they write on their phones. For example, they could put contact information, URLs that link to mobile Internet sites, or other small amounts of other text on the tags.
The update is available for download to owners of Google’s first Android NFC phone, the Nexus S.
Gingerbread still does not support NFC’s card-emulation mode–which would enable users to tap their phones as they would contactless cards. This would allow for payment, ticketing, access control and other secure applications, which could be stored on embedded chips or SIMs in the phones.
Support for card emulation in the Gingerbread software is expected–perhaps in time for the arrival of several more NFC-enabled Android phones expected on the market this year. They include the Samsung Galaxy S II, due at mid-year, along with models from LG Electronics, HTC and, likely, Motorola.
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