Android Gingerbread: NFC support - Receive Only?

Question

Just looking through the newly released Gingerbread documents and I see they've added some support for Near Field Communication (as expected).

However, it looks to me like its receive only (you can receive NFC communications and messages but you can't send them). Is that everyone's interpretation? Haven't had a chance to do a deep dive here, but that's what it looked like to me. Just 3 classes added and I don't see a send() method anywhere.

So receive only is Ok, but then that would leave us with cell,wi-fi,bluetooth if we need to communicate back. Am I missing something here?

Answer 1

Am I missing something here?

In Android 2.3, I don't think so. I agree that it looks read-only, in terms of the API and the sample code they supply.

However, indications are that the Nexus S NFC hardware supports read and write, so perhaps additional APIs are coming in future versions of Android.

In the interim, think of NFC tags as playing a role akin to QR codes.

Answer 2

In the latest Gingerbread release there is write support for tags, and for limited P2P functionality. With enableForegroundNdefPush() you can send NDEF messages to the other device.