Google Nexus 7 and NFC tags - are you using them?

[Mattylad]

Hello, is anyone using NFC tags with their Nexus 7?

What are you using yours for?

The idea looks cool to me, one in the car to run the sat nav app, one on my bedside table to turn to low power and turn on the alarm app etc, my work desk for something and so on.

What do you reckon to getting some from a supermarket? can I perhaps use them?

I can see I need the NTAG203 type, although large capacity ones are quite expensive so might start with some of these to play with.

Has anyone any verified info on what happens to battery life with NFC turned on?
I have searched for an nfc toggle but cannot find one, all I can find is power toggles and that brings up the nfc settings rather than toggles it.

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[Rowdyeh]

Hi Mattylad. You can find the NFC toggle alongside Wireless and Bluetooth settings in Settings. Check the manual that came with your Nexus 7 how to do that. Of course you should only turn on NFC or Bluetooth while you need them as they will increase battery usage. Enjoy your tablet!

[Mattylad]

Cheers, I know where the toggle is - I was referring to a toggle widget to quickly turn it on/off like I do with wifi/gps etc.

[grnidkjun]

I'm curious if anyone is actually using this out in the retail world yet. Is anyone utilizing the NFC feature much?

[Mattylad]

Well, I have been experimenting with them.

I have some tags with 137bytes of space, this allows about 6 commands max.

Initially I have found them excellent in that I can start the satnav when I put it on the car mount.
However if I leave NFC turned on it continues to detect it 30s later and goes through the routine again.

So the answer is to make it also turn off NFC, but I understand that this cannot be toggled.

I found a way though, turn airplane mode on, this disables NFC and then I can turn on the connections that I do need.

Problem solved.

I also have a tag setup so that I can use it when going shopping at the supermarket, turns on all my shopping apps (sad eh) and one on my desk at work to turn the volume down, trun on wifi and start playing music. (one day I'll find something really useful to do with them).

I can read my passport and anything else that uses RFID tags so will be keeping an eye out when I next find any in the shops.

I'll keep an eye out for some cheap larger capacity tags (1kb) so then I can toggle stuff on and off.

It's fun!