Handle NFC while phone is sleeping in Android

Question

I'd like to know if it's possible to handle NFC while the phone is sleeping ? It seems that no intent is launched so I imagine that the system turns off the nfc ?

Answer 1

No. The intent won't be generated and sent while the device's display is off. If you have Nexus S, try to tag something and observe catlog, you'll find nothing received on the phone.

I think this behavior is very reasonable. Since today so many things around us have RFID tag within, if the NFC apps can be triggered even when the screen is off, something unexpected may happen.

Answer 2

NFC is fairly new... but to my knowledge, about the only things that will run while a phone is in "deep sleep" are Alarms from the AlarmManager and incoming Phone Calls and text messages.

Quoting Mark Murphy of CommonsWare fame...

"About the only thing you can count on not stopping is the GSM or CDMA radio (for incoming calls, SMSes, and IP packets) and AlarmManager"

Android Sleep/Standby Mode