Smartphone boon era seems to be over. Smartphone market is maturing.
Gartner’s latest figures record the first ever decline (a 5.6 per cent decline over Q4 2016 figure) since the analyst began tracking the market. (Though it’s not the first analyst to call a decline.)

Global smartphone sales have not been firing on all cylinders for several years now. Huawei and Xiaomi were the only smartphone vendors to actively increase their market shares.

Two main factors led to the Q4 sales drop: A slowing of upgrades from feature phones to smartphones and existing smartphone owners keeping them for longer. Even Chinese buyers appear to be getting tapped out.

This is an interesting idea to make RFID circuits smaller.

Posted from WordPress for Android

Posted from WordPress for Android

They worked well. Getting started helped to get started.

Samsung TecTile is an app lets you read and write TecTile NFC tags. You can create TecTiles to change settings on your phone, launch applications, update social status, or even make phone calls or send text messages automatically.

The first tests with TecTile app was success. I could get selected application to launch or change phone profile when then touch the tag. I plan to use those tags to for example turn device on Silent when I placed it next to bed and on car hands-free mode when I place the phone on the phone holder in the car. I thinks I use TecTiles app for this instead of some other alternatives like Trigger.

On thing what I wanted to try with NFC tag was making a tag for a business card that opens web browser to ePanorama.net when you touch NFC phone with it. After some testing I could not easily to get TecTile app to do what I wanted. Fortunately there are other software to try. After testing several of them I found that NFC TagWriter by NXP is a very good software to program and read NFC tag contents. With that I could easily make a tag that opens web browser pointing to ePanorama.net.

Matkakortinluku program says it costs 0.99 Euros and it is based on free source code released on GPLv3. When this is GPL program, it is probable that there are also other applications on Play shop. I did a little search and found free alternatives Matkakortin lukija ilmainen by M.Salomaa and HSL-lukija.

I installed Matkakortin lukija ilmainen by M.Salomaa to my phone. It allows easily to read HSL “Matkakortti” -card information with a NFC equipped Android phone: Current balance, season ticket validity. In addition to that the software can read information on recent trips (Last 7 trips. Last value ticket and season ticket trips in detail). The only downside of the program I see are the advertisements that can be sometimes annoying (but that’s the price of the free software).

If you care not living near Helsinki Finland, the software could still be of some interest to you, because Matkakortin lukija ilmainen by M.Salomaa supports also some several other cards used all over the world (check the software page for list of supported card types). If you are a RFID hacker, you might want to check the MIFARE public transit cards reader software source code.

When you can read the card, can you hack it? There has been examples of some hacks on this like like one shown atNot fare: Hacker app resets subway card for free rides (w/ Video) article. There was even a video that claimed to be HSL card hack, but was found bogus joke. HSL has systems on their back-office that allows them to detect is someone tries to do something nasty with their cards. There are some plans for web or smart phone based way to charge HSL card sometimes in the future.

Wikipedia defines NFC: Near field communication (NFC) is a set of standards for smartphones and similar devices to establish radio communication with each other by touching them together or bringing them into close proximity, usually no more than a few centimeters. Present and anticipated applications include contactless transactions, data exchange, and simplified setup of more complex communications such as Wi-Fi. Communication is also possible between an NFC device and an unpowered NFC chip, called a “tag”.

Typical application type is that you take your NFC enabled device, touch it to another NFC device or “tag”, and your device does something automatically. What is done could be a payment made using NFC technologies or your mobile phone can open a web page that the “tag” points to. How to Automate Your Phone for Every Room in the House with NFC Tags gives some more ideas what you can do. Sound something that I would want to try.

So the next thing is to get NFC “tag” and program it. How to program an NFC tag with your Android device tells that programming an NFC tag from your NFC-capable Android device is extremely easy and can lend itself to some very useful scenarios. All you need is Android device with NFC capabilities, NFC tags and an app that allows you to write to the tags. The article recommends to buy pre-formatted tags.

8 Types Of Data You Can Easily Program On NFC Tags article tells what can be written to NFC tags:
Types Of Data You Can Store On NFC Tags
1. Website URL
2. Foursquare/Facebook Venue Check-In
3. Address Book Contact
4. Phone Number – make a phone call.
5. Plain Text
6. Pre-formatted Email
7. Link to a Map
8. Smartphone Profiles

How To Program NFC Tags With Your Android Device [Video] and How to program an NFC tag with your Android device video gives instructions on the programming task.

For testing purposes I bought Diamond Shape Rewritable Waterproof 13.56Mhz NFC Smart Tag – Transparent + Silver. According to specifications it looked promising: Memory Capacity: 1 Kbyte EEPROM Storage(716 free bytes available); Suitable for long url, annotation, information and tasks. Type: MIFARE classic 1K(MF1ICS50). Application can read the NFC tags and cover with any smartphones that has NFC function

I finally got the device (took quite bit of time for the slow mail to get it to me).

Sounded good, but did not work on my smartphone Samsung S4 mini The smartphone kept telling that it could not work with it. The description on the product said works with “any smartphones that has NFC function”. Was my unit broken or is there something else wrong?

After some Google searching I learned more. Mifare Classic NFC Tags Compatibility Issues – Nexus 4, Nexus 10, Samsung Galaxy S4, & New (2013) Nexus 7 article tells that there was a lot of confusion about the Nexus 4 and 10 and NFC compatibility with the Mifare Classic 1K NFC Tags. The article tells that NXP has been one of the leading manufacturers of NFC hardware and pretty much all Android phones up to a certain point used NXP hardware. NXP created the Mifare Classic 1K Chip specifically to be compatible with it’s hardware and not necessarily to adhere to the protocols. Those Mifare Classic chips are not necessarily compatible with any phone that uses other manufacturer’s hardware, that work only with tags that completely adhere to the NFC Forum’s Protocols. The article recommends to get NFC tag that complies with the NFC Forum’s protocol, for example NTAG203 or Topaz 512 Tags.

It seems that Samsung was also hit by those same compatibility issues when they changed their NFC chips from NXP to Broadcom. Samsung Galaxy S 4 Incompatible with Original TecTiles, TecTile 2 Announced article says that new phones are not compatible with NFC stickers Samsung sold just a short while ago.

It seems that my first trial with NFC failed. I need to get standards compliant NFC tags to continue. I just learned that you need to be careful what type of NFC tags to get if you want them to be compatible with all NFC enabled phones. It might be a good idea to stay away from Mifare Classic 1K NFC Tags which you can seen in quite many places.