new Nokia phone, the Nokia 3220 NFC RFID phone-front

 
Details of a new Nokia phone have emerged with built-in read/write RFID capability.  The prototype Nokia 3220 NFC contains an RFID reader and writer on the base of the mobile phone. 

 

RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) is a kind of super-barcode for the 21st century.  An RFID tag is a tiny object that can be attached to anything, and which contains information that can be read by an RFID reader.  Unlike a barcode, however, the information encoded into the tag can also be written to.  The new Nokia 3220 enables the user to do just that: both read the information contained within an RFID tag, and write to it too.

 

Although based on an old Nokia 3220, the Nokia 3220 NFC is a completely new prototype. With its RFID enhancement, the RFID phone can interact with the world around us in bizarre new ways. Informative beer bottles? Informational trash cans? Virtual graffiti? Read on to see how the new Nokia 3220 NFC RFID phone will reshape society as you know it.

 

[Source: ElasticSpace]

 

How the Nokia 3220 RFID phone can be used

 
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At its most simplest, the Nokia 3220 NFC RFID phone simply reads and writes information contained within an RFID tag. You simply place the bottom of the 3220 over a tag, and it reads the information, flashing and bleeping when the information has been successfully received. At first glance, this seems no different to Bluetooth communication.
 
But very soon, nearly every product in existence will be tagged with an RFID device.  With mobile phones able to read this information, you can interact with your surroundings in ways undreamed of.
 
Nokia 3220 RFID mobile phone prototype-back

 
Obvious applications that spring to mind include advertising: you walk past a poster, want to find out more about the product, and so swipe your RFID-reading mobile phone over it.  The phone picks up a URL to a web site containing more information, and links to purchase the product as well.
 
Want a new ringtone? Buy a CD of your artist of choice and swipe the cover. Better still, if the recording industry really worked out it's the 21st century and moved with the times a bit, swipe the cover of a CD to hear a 30 second snippet of the music it contains - you like what you hear, you're more inclined to buy the CD there and then.  Extends the life of the music CD, halts the alleged decline in sales of the format, gives people new reasons to go to record stores, and encourages more impulse buying.
 
Other examples include:
  • Want to know the timetable for the bus you're on? Swipe the bus ticket, retrieve the URL of the bus company, read all the info you need.
  • When was your bottle of beer made?  Swipe the bottle...
  • When is the next collection of rubbish due?....swipe your rubbish bin
  • What's the Amazon link to an author?....swipe a book
etc!
 
From a business perspective, RFID can be embedded into business cards, enabling contact information to be exchanged just by swiping the mobile phone over the card
 
From a  more personal perspective, upload several photos (taken form your camera phone, naturally!) onto Flickr, and send a birthday card to a friend with an RFID tag embedded into it containing the URL of your photos (or maybe even a video message).
 

Transforming society with the Nokia NFC 3220 RFID phone

 

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I can see society being completely reshaped with this technology.  Because the Nokia 3220 NFC RFID phone has the ability to write information in an RFID tag as well, you can imagine RFID tags acting as virtual graffiti. Rather than writing on a park bench, simply write info into its RFID tag for someone else to read and amend later on.
 
OK, so all of this does rather require that these objects will have appropriate RFID tags within them that contain appropriate information. However, RFID is being installed into virtually every device you can think of. Currently, the info contained within these tags is designed only to identify the object so that it can link into a business's Point Of Sales and logistics systems, thereby reducing their application to the general user.  However, with mobile phone RFID readers and writers looming on the horizon, this means that pretty soon everyone will be able to read and write to these tags.  Once that happens, the number of RFID applications will quite simply explode.
 
A world with ubiquitous RFID tags will never seem the same again.  Quite literally a whole new virtual world of information can be encoded directly into the physical everyday objects of the world around us.  The real world will start to merge with the virtual world in a way never seen before, completely transforming the way we live.  This technology, if used intelligently and openly, has the potential to be as transformative as the mobile phone itself. I, for one, can't wait.