Android Phones to pay for your dinner!
Google’s Eric Schmidt at the recent Web 2.0 Summit announced the release of the latest Android mobile operating system; v2.3 aka Gingerbread in a few weeks. Along with the list of features of the OS, he revealed it’s support for a technology called Near Field Communication (NFC). With the support for this technology Eric plans to partner with credit card companies (e.g. VISA) and turn handsets into a credit card device.
NFC is basically a short-range, high frequency wireless technology that can swap data from two devices kept at most 4-inches apart. While Android 2.3 may support NFC it’ll still require a NFC chip to be installed in the phones. It’s no rocket science embedding these chips into cell phones; in fact there are a few phones that do come with the NFC chip. The support will moreso encourage manufacturers to install the chip in their handsets. So soon you could have your Android phone paying for dinners and movies at the theaters.
Even better for us fringsters, we can pay our fringOut charges according to our usage. Not bad!
Tags: Android 2.3, Gingerbread, Near Field Communication, NFC, VISA
