When Google revealed its newest version of the Android operating system this week, Android 2.3, code-named “Gingerbread,” there was one slight disappointment: the highly anticipated NFC (near field communications) support was somewhat crippled. According to Google’s own Android 2.3 User’s Guide (PDF link), Gingerbread allows mobile phones with NFC chips to work as readers, but not as transmitters, the latter which would be a necessary component to any NFC-enabled mobile payments system.
As it turns out, this restriction is only temporary. Google will soon be rolling out software development kit (SDK) updates to support mobile payments and additional NFC services on a step-by-step basis.
Google will release software upgrades to Android 2.3 and other extensions to its SDK to enable the additional functions, says NXP. The only reason that Gingerbread is limited to just tag reading for now is because Google wanted to introduce NFC quickly.
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