"Android and NFC" presentation delivered by Vili Törmänen at Android Oulu event 2011-05-04 . More information: http://androidaalto.org

1. NFC-based Services for Android
Platform
Android Keynote #3
Vili Törmänen
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland

2. 05/05/2011 2
Biography
Vili Törmänen,
vili.tormanen@vtt.fi, +358 400 941 865
Service Technology team
Mobile Contactless Services research domain
Worked with NFC from 2005
Publications related to NFC: 8
Track B (Research) winner on Touching the Future
– The First European NFC Competition 2007 with
concept SeeingEyePhone
Research Track winner on NFC Forum Global
Competition 2009 with concept Hot in the City
http://hotinthecity.vtt.fi
More information at http://mocs.vtt.fi

3. 05/05/2011 3
Topics
What is Near Field Communication (NFC)
Applications & Services
NFC programming on Android
Android as a platform

4. 05/05/2011 4
Near Field Communication
Origins from physical selection paradigms
point me
touch me
scan me
Based on existing short range wireless (RFID) standards
Interoperable with existing (smart card) infrastructure
Distance 0 – 10 centimeter. In practice less than 5 cm
Killer app?

5. 05/05/2011 5
NFC Modes
NFC has three modes where one can be active at a time
Tag
Reading information from tag
Writing information to tag
Card Emulation
For payment, ticketing, secure applications
Peer-to-peer
Sharing information between devices

6. 05/05/2011 6
Smart Poster Event ticketing
Connection to
devices
NFC
use cases
Connecting to
services
Exchange business
cards
Payment
Transportation
Service discovery and use

7. 05/05/2011 7
NFC handset penetration
Source: Frost&Sullivan: Real start for NFC, December 2010

8. 05/05/2011 8
NFC devices and tags
Phones
History: Nokia 3220 & 5140i with detachable back
cover, 6131 NFC, 6212 NFC
Current: Samsung S5230 Star NFC, Google Nexus S,
very soon Nokia C7
Future: Samsung Galaxy S II, HTC Sensation
successor, 2 x BlackBerry, Samsung Bada platform, …
USB readers
Wireless readers
Passive tags

9. 05/05/2011 9
Google Nexus S
Currently supported NFC features
Read tags
Write tags
Peer-to-peer (limited)

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NFC “Research Applications”
Delivering product information to visually
impaired(SeeingEyePhone)
HearMeFeelMe project is based on the success of
SeeingEyePhone (http://www.hearmefeelme.org)
Explores the possibilities of compensating declined
eyesight with mobile technology
Pilot: Providing medicine information for elderly
visually impaired
Pilot: Blind users get spoken information from tagged
items. They record the message by themselves and
tag whatever item they want
Ibumax 400 mg
1-2 tablets 3 times
a day…

11. 05/05/2011 11
Other experimented domains
Driver’s log
Food delivery
Grocery shopping
Car parking
Social networking
Medicine information for
visually impaired
Delivering work instructions
Reporting work time / finished
tasks / condition of items
Platform to enable secure use
of web services
NFC Blood Glucose Meter

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Under the hood
NFC first in Android 2.3. Upgraded to 2.3.3 with more features
Read & Write tag
P2P (limited)
Device receiving the data must support com.android.npp
NDEF push protocol, which is optional for Android
devices.
Secure Element (embedded / Single Wire Protocol UICC)
Keys for embedded element (no info released)
SWP in hardware, not yet in software

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Under the hood II
Packages:
android.nfc
High level classes to interact with local device’s NFC
adapter, to represent discovered tags and to use NDEF
data format
android.nfc.tech
Classes to query properties and perform I/O operations on
a tag

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Tips
Antenna location affects user experience and software design
The communication speed has effect on user experience. Maximum
data rate is 424 kbits/s
Do people know how to use NFC? Do they know it works by touch?
If they do, how they know when to touch tag/phone?
Teach the user at least in the first time?
Application can start by touching a tag. Try to use that if it suits your
application
Proved that users like that
We have been using mostly Mifare 1k tags in our experiments
The Catch: Easy User Interface!

15. 05/05/2011 15
Android as a platform
Google has Android Market, Checkout, Places, Maps, Ads…
Secure: Checkout (payment), Places (coupons)
Open: Android Market, Maps, …
First NFC phone available backed up with ecosystem
= Lucrative for developers
61 hits for NFC at Android Market (remember reduce the ~6
National Football Club applications…)

16. 05/05/2011 16
Thank you!
For more information
Vili Törmänen
vili.tormanen@vtt.fi
Mobile Contactless Services web page
http://mocs.vtt.fi

17. 05/05/2011 17
VTT creates business from
technology