“This is the new connector for many years to come,” Phil Schiller, Apple’s Senior VP, told AllThingsD in an interview after the iPhone 5′s unveiling. Apple’s decision to not include NFC and wireless charging, technologies that have been used as buzzwords in marketing campaigns by Apple’s biggest competitors, is raising quite a few eyebrows. Neither NFC nor wireless charging is a new technology in cellphones – Nokia had introduced NFC in one of its phones way back in 2006 whil...

Nokia has announced the BH-310, an NFC Bluetooth headset which can be paired with the vendor’s NFC enabled smartphones with a single tap. With its Digital Signal Processing tech and built-in microphones (two), the headset offers noise suppression and echo cancellation to let you hear and be heard despite any background noise. And with Nokia’s ‘Always Ready’ feature you can answer calls by simply picking up the headset from the holder and end them automatically when you put the headset back...

After accidentally publishing a video earlier in the day, Nokia has officially announced the Lumia 610 NFC edition. Orange will be the first carrier to offer it but we won’t be surprised if it makes it to other countries too. Nokia says it added an NFC software stack on top of Windows Phone OS apart from the necessary NFC hardware.The Lumia 610 NFC is already certified with Mastercard PayPass and Visa payWave contactless payment solution. Hit the break below for a video of the Lumia 610 NFC in action. (...

Nokia accidentally posted a video of the Lumia 610 NFC on its official YouTube channel before yanking it off. It looks exactly like the Lumia 610 but comes with NFC support. This would be the first Windows Phone smartphone to come with NFC support. (more…)Google+

Nokia 603 is now available online in India at LetsBuy for Rs 14,285. For now, the smartphone is only available in Black color. It was announced a few months ago by the Finnish giant and is based on the Nokia Belle Operating System (earlier known as the Symbian Belle). The Nokia 603 offers a 3.5-inch (640 x 360 pixels) ClearBlack display, offers six home screens and comes with six swappable rear covers in a variety of colors. It is powered by a 1GHz processor, sports a 5.0MP shooter at the back which can recor...

A guide has been released by the NFC Forum and the Bluetooth Special Interest Group that describes at length the procedures required to pair Bluetooth devices with the help of NFC technology. The Bluetooth Secure Simple Pairing Using NFC guide is free for a download from here and also points out how NFC technology can be used to pair smartphones with vehicles/pedometers. It also mentions how this tech can be used in future to control television sets with smartphones. Continue reading…. (more…)Goog...

Intel seems to be taking the smartphone and tablet market seriously now. With an NFC deal with INSIDE in hand, the US chip maker is also bringing four of its divisions under a single roof so as to boost its mobile business, Reuters reports. The new division combines Intel’s netbook and tablets division, its ultra mobility division, the mobile communications division and the mobile wireless division, spokesman Robert Manetta told the news wire agency. Read on for details. (more…)Google+

An agreement between Intel and INSIDE will give the former an access to the latter’s software and hardware technology for near-field communications (NFC). With this, Intel chips will be able to securely exchange data wirelessly at short range. The US chip maker entered into a deal with INSIDE for an undisclosed amount. The deal would help Intel with its upcoming smartphone chipsets, especially when it already has a deal with Google to provide chipset solutions for devices running Android. Embedding NFC capa...

Research In Motion (RIM) today announced BlackBerry Tag at GITEX 2011, which will enable BlackBerry smartphone users to exchange multimedia content, contact information or BBM PINs by just tapping their phones against each other. The service will soon become available in RIM’s NFC-enabled smartphones like the Bold 9900 and the Curve 9370. BlackBerry Tag will be included in the next BlackBerry 7 OS update. RIM will also release APIs for BlackBerry Tag, which will enable developers to incorporate ‘t...

The NFC Forum has updated its NFC spec to Simple NDEF Exchange Protocol (SNEP) that will enable consumers to use NFC to transfer data irrespective of the device manufacturer. The new specification also brings the ability to transfer data, which till now was only available to NFC tags in read/write mode. This will allow NFC-enabled devices to send messages to each other (contacts, links…) that could lead to more use cases and an open, interoperable ecosystem for the technology.One of the examples cited b...

Isis, the joint venture between AT&T Mobility, T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless, announced today that HTC, LG, Motorola Mobility, RIM, Samsung Mobile and Sony Ericsson will introduce NFC-enabled mobile devices that implement Isis’ NFC and technology standards. For consumers who have or purchase smartphones that are not NFC-enabled, Isis is working with DeviceFidelity to add NFC functionality to the mobile device, ensuring a wide range of consumer choice.“Isis’ technology standards provide the direc...

Last week, Nokia invited us along with a select group of bloggers for an offsite event to showcase its upcoming Symbian Belle devices, which are expected to be launched in India later this week. The smartphones – 600, 700 and 701 – form a new wave of Symbian devices, all running on a 1GHz processors and a revamped UI that makes it slightly more intuitive to use with a better touch interface. Surprisingly, specs and feature updates were not the main focus of Nokia’s spokespeople at the event....