Gadgetory

hey guys it's Joe the Android guy NFC and spare batteries how do they work together and what do you need to keep in mind when you get a new one that's what we're gonna talk about in this week's episode of the Android guy weekly so NFC or near field communication is something that most new phones are starting to come with notice I said starting to come with there have been a few phones that have had NFC in them in the past the Galaxy Nexus is one a lot of the the galaxy phones from Samsung and of course the Nexus S which is also a samsung phone but as popularity increases you're going to see NFC in more and more devices and why is that well NFC stands for near field communication and it lets you communicate simple bits of information at very short distances so it's not bluetooth it's not Wi-Fi it's not anything like that instead it's the ability for your phone to communicate with another device which might be something as simple as a sticker to be able to send information back and forth now if you remember the old old old Pocket PC days do you remember how all of those devices had an infrared port that you could beam information across kind of like that but really not that much it's very slow and it has very very limited information transfer that's why I bring up the whole infrared transfer thing but it doesn't really have to be fast in this case with NFC because you're sending such small little bits of information well what can you do with it one of the main things that you can do introduced with Ice Cream Sandwich is the ability to share information with another device also with NFC with it turned on with Ice Cream Sandwich so you know not a whole ton of people out there yet but it's really cool when you find someone that you can if you want to share this episode of the Android guy weekly with your friend you just open it up you're looking at it on your phone you're watching it on the subway or whatnot and hey it's awesome you want to share it with your buddy all you have to do is hold your phone up to the back of his phone and beep there you go it says hey do you want to share this you tap your screen he then gets that information right there you can do the same thing with web pages with business cards with calendar appointments all kinds of stuff it's really really a cool technique in technology something else that you can do it doesn't have to be a phone that you're doing that with you know phone to phone you can do that with a sticker kind of like barcode scanning with QR codes so you can get information to your phone quicker that way you can also through the use of an app and specialized hardware use it as a credit card now how does that work well especially with the Nexus family the Nexus S began and then the Galaxy Nexus next that was a lot of Nexus wasn't it anyway what you can do is tap the back of your phone to a payment terminal a pay pass terminal and beep be able to pay for whatever it is that you're buying with the credit card stored on your phone now there are some pretty big caveats that go along with that that will tackle in an upcoming article not an episode of the of the Android go weekly so you're going to have to go over to pocketnow.com and keep up with my articles over there to be able to read about some of the caveats with Google Wallet that just came up and a threat by the way you'll want to make sure you get that it's kind of fun so now that we've covered kind of what NFC is and what it does how does it do it well NFC is very very simply a transceiver there's a chip in specialized phones that lets you transmit this very short bit of information and it also has an antenna that lets you receive very small bits of information and the system works together pretty well well I don't know if you've been keeping track in smart phones and tablets and whatnot how many antenna do you have in there antennas and 10 I let us know which one you prefer in the comments there's lots of these little buggers in there you've got bluetooth you've got Wi-Fi you've got CDMA you've got GSM in the same phone you've got HSPA you've got edge you lots and lots of stuff sometimes they're built into the same antenna sometimes they're separate antennas and they're just a lot of them so where are you gonna cram this extra antenna which in all honesty has to be somewhat large comparatively speaking these NFC antenna are very both are big but you don't see them anyway they don't add any bulk to the phone so how do they do that they do that through your battery now there's some confusion going around that says that NFC chips are inside your battery not true in fact let's go ahead and read this battery right there says Samsung near-field communication in fact it says it on both sides of the battery so a lot of people think well if I want to have near field communication I have to have a paddle battery can I take a battery and put it in my non NFC phone and tada now I've got NFC in my older phone no you can't or how about this I've got Google Wallet on here but I've got this error message that says that my NFC chip is borked can I just swap out the battery and have it work no you can't sorry and why is that the whole reason behind that is because that's not your NFC chip that's your antenna the NFC chip is still stored tightly inside your phone your antenna there's used to help transmit the signal and receive the incoming signal as well very very simple but they didn't say with near-field communication antenna they just said near field communication so what about spare batteries can you get a spare battery pop it in your phone and have your phone still work well if it is an actual legitimate battery then yes you can meaning if it's a name-brand battery specific for your phone from your phone manufacturer you're you're good to go you're just fine as long as it's the model for your phone I haven't seen any yet that are say a replacement for the Galaxy Nexus that don't include the NFC antenna there might be some out there I just haven't seen any so keep that in mind when looking at replacement batteries or spare batteries extended batteries which this one is not also come with in general the NFC stuff built-in so you're probably okay there where do you get into some problems well if you get generic batteries that all it is is a battery they may or may not have that NFC antenna in them so you need to be kind of aware of that how about knock-offs you know you find some deal on eBay where you can get a extended battery for 3 bucks there's probably something wrong with that battery you either it's a refurb or it was a reject or it's counterfeit and if it's counterfeit they usually just take the label and reprint it the the manufacturers label slap it on their fake battery and there you go so it's not a Samsung battery and you know what it probably doesn't have B in it so if your NFC stops working with your spare battery probably want to see if you can get a refund for that but if you stick with authorized distributors if you stick with name brands you're probably okay and you'll still be able to use your NFC now that's implying that you're using your NFC now if you're not I encourage you to take a look at some of the things we talked about in this video to see what you can do with NFC my personal favorite is exchanging business cards I don't have to do it through a QR code but I can if someone has a phone with NFC I can very quickly and easily exchange business cards just by tapping our phones together as long as they have NFC and Ice Cream Sandwich so it's really really a cool thing and then of course I can fall back to QR code if I need to so that's my favorite thing to do with NFC now it's your turn we want to know two things from you in this week's episode one is what's your favorite thing to do with NFC let us know in the comments down below the second thing is have you gotten an extended battery for your phone and if so were you aware of the need to have this NFC antenna in it or not let us know that down in the comments below as well so I think that's going to wrap it up for talking on NFC and spare batteries if you have any other questions at all of course leave those also in the comments below make sure you head on over to pocketnow.com and leave comments on that article and see the other news now just a reminder we do have another article coming up at pocket now it's not gonna be on the youtube channel you'll have to go over to the website and check it out it's gonna be under my name so just look for me you'll know it when you see it it involves Google Wallet and a threat if you like this video and the Android guy weekly make sure you give it a big thumbs up let me know how you're doing on the homework assignment from last week where we challenged you to share our wolves sheep and sheepdogs with everybody else I want an update on that also in the comments and anything else that you want to feedback let us know as well for PocketNow the android guy weekly and NFC in batteries I'm Joe the Android guy