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androidnfc
Fraggle
Fraggle

Reputation: 8727

Android Gingerbread: NFC support - Receive Only?

Just looking through the newly released Gingerbread documents and I see they've added some support for Near Field Communication (as expected).

However, it looks to me like its receive only (you can receive NFC communications and messages but you can't send them). Is that everyone's interpretation? Haven't had a chance to do a deep dive here, but that's what it looked like to me. Just 3 classes added and I don't see a send() method anywhere.

So receive only is Ok, but then that would leave us with cell,wi-fi,bluetooth if we need to communicate back. Am I missing something here?

Upvotes: 6

Views: 1485

Answers (4)

André Cruz
André Cruz

Reputation: 510

In the latest Gingerbread release there is write support for tags, and for limited P2P functionality. With enableForegroundNdefPush() you can send NDEF messages to the other device.

Upvotes: 1

Wesley Wiser
Wesley Wiser

Reputation: 9851

Android 2.3.3 provides improved and extended support for NFC, to allow applications to interact with more types of tags in new ways.

A new, comprehensive set of APIs give applications read and write access to a wider range of standard tag technologies, including:

  • NFC-A (ISO 14443-3A)
  • NFC-B (ISO 14443-3B)
  • NFC-F (JIS 6319-4)
  • NFC-V (ISO 15693)
  • ISO-DEP (ISO 14443-4)
  • Mifare Classic
  • Mifare Ultralight
  • NFC Forum NDEF tags

See the API Overview page for more information.

Upvotes: 0

user223697
user223697

Reputation: 293

The Android 2.3 docs does state that the functionality has read only capability, but makes no mention of transmision. Send capabilities seem to be implicitly unavailable with the current release.

"Android 2.3 includes an NFC stack and framework API that lets developers read NDEF tags..."

Upvotes: 0

CommonsWare
CommonsWare

Reputation: 1006984

Am I missing something here?

In Android 2.3, I don't think so. I agree that it looks read-only, in terms of the API and the sample code they supply.

However, indications are that the Nexus S NFC hardware supports read and write, so perhaps additional APIs are coming in future versions of Android.

In the interim, think of NFC tags as playing a role akin to QR codes.

Upvotes: 7

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