In a slightly bumbling sequence of moves this morning, Nokia's new NFC-enabled Lumia 610 phone was first leaked, then officially outed by Nokia. Nokia calls it the "most affordable" edition of its new Windows Phones, and that will surely help it win a bigger marketshare among smartphones--especially if the phone can outperform against cheap, almost-generic Android units, and even address the pre-pay phone market that's huge in many places outside the U.S. But the 610's not a one-trick pony, and in addition to its price point it also has another new attractor: wireless payment and tag-reading technology.
Nokia explains that the hardware is built directly into the phone--this is its eighth smartphone to use the system, so Nokia's pretty good at this now--but that the software support had to be built directly on top of the core Windows Phone 7 code the phone runs. This may be because of Microsoft's will it?/won't it? approach to supporting NFC in the current OS. But it likely won't be a problem when Windows Phone 8 arrives because MS has said it's definitely supporting it in the new system (and, very probably, working closely with Nokia to ensure it all works seamlessly).
We write a lot about NFC, as it may become a ubiquitous tech soon enough and potentially a transformative one for mobile tech users. But NFC is still a rarity, so what can you do with the Lumia's new powers? Quite a lot, actually, as it's been certified by both MasterCard and Visa as compatible with their rival wave-and-pay protocols. It's also going to work with "ticketing solutions," which likely means transportation systems such as Hong Kong's Octupus, the U.K.'s Oystercard solution, Portugal's transit system, and the fledgling efforts at NFC ticketing in New York (assuming t...
[Source: Fast Company]
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