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I'm looking into starting some projects with Android and NFC. What kind of bandwidth does NFC provide? This is assuming I had a suitable NFC reader/writer attached to an Arduino or similar, and that was communicating with an Android device held in contact with it. Lots of people suggest to initiate the communication with NFC and then do the actual data transfer via Bluetooth, but I'm wondering the bandwidth available for strictly NFC communication, just out of curiosity.
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Recent Android versions support 212 and 424 kbit/s.
NFC requires much less power which makes it suitable for passive devices. But a major drawback is that NFC transmission is slower than Bluetooth (424kbit. second as compared to 2.1Mbit/seconds) with Bluetooth 2.1. One advantage that NFC enjoys is faster connectivity.
NFC tends to be more secure than Bluetooth, as it operates on a shorter range allowing for a more stable connection. Therefore, NFC tends to be a better solution for crowded and busy places, where a lot of different devices are trying to communicate with each other, creating signal interference.
According to work presented by [3], NFC is a short range radio frequency technology that exchanges data using a wireless system such as phone and sensor. This method could speed up the process of data collection and reduce missing data if it is being performed manually.
The supported data-rates of the air-interface are one thing. The data-rate that you see after removing protocol overhead, waiting for eeprom writes and all the other stuff that takes time is a whole different story.
Long story short, the practical data-rate when reading from a tag or doing peer-to-peer transfers peaks around 2.5 kilobyte/second.
And depending on specific tags or the peer technology it can be a lot slower than that.
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NFC supports 106/212/424 kbit/s. Apparently there are 848 kbit/s cards also, but they're not compliant with the standard.
That being said, the speed you'll get in the real world depends on the device/card you're using. It's not all that fast in reality.
Another reason for using bluetooth for the actual transfer is proximity. Bluetooth has a much better range than NFC. NFC's range is pitiful, simply put. For an NFC-only transfer, you'd have to make sure the devices were very close the entire time(and preferably not moving). For NFC hand-off to bluetooth, you just have to tap them for a half-second or so, and then it doesn't matter if they move around the room.
Now, if you're just talking about sending a few kilos here and there, it's not a problem.
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From Wikipedia
Supported data rates: 106, 212 or 424 kbit/s (the bit rate 848 kbit/s is not compliant with the standard ISO/IEC 18092)
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