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How to Get the Best Out of Your NFC Enabled Android Smartphone

If you are the proud owner of a new shiny NFC enabled android smartphone such as the Samsung Galaxy S3, the HTC One X or the Sony Xperia S (the list goes on) and own one of those mysterious NFC tags that came with your phone, you are in luck. NFC is a new growing technology popping up at check out counters to make mobile based payments. NFC can also be used around your home and workplace to automate tasks with a simple touch.

Before you get started, make sure you have an NFC enabled android smartphone and an NFC tag/chip. These mostly come free with your phone, but if you didn’t get any or want more, you can get it for cheap on sites like ebay and amazon.

Basically an NFC tag has a chip that gets activated when an NFC enabled phone is bought close to it. When activated it transfers some data to your phone, which are usually instructions for an app in the phone itself or a hyperlink to a website.

Most of the time, NFC enabled phones come with an inbuilt app to use them, but if you want to take all the power into your hands, you can easily download and use the following apps to make your NFC experience even better.

1.NFC Task Launcher by Tagstand is a great app to manage your NFC enabled smartphone. You can easily program your NFC chips to perform particular functions such as:

When your ‘Bedroom’ tag is active, switch on Wi-Fi and open up Pandora, or any other music service you may use. The possibilities are literally limitless. When using an app like this however, make sure other NFC ‘managers’ are disabled or uninstalled.

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2.NFC TagWriter by NXP is another app to take control of your tech, but is meant for advanced users. However, if you are into completely transforming your lifestyle with technology, you have to try this out. This app will allow you to write any kind of data to your NFC chips. This means that you can program things, that your NFC manager cannot. This includes programming your chips with custom text, hyperlinks to your website, making payments using services with open APIs and so on. However, this will be most useful to professionals or store administrators where you can use tech to transform customer’s shopping experiences

3.NFC Alarm Clock by Wro is another useful trick taking advantage of the nature of the NFC technology. This is a must have for all you lazy birds out there with angry bosses and busy houses! This app is basically an alarm that completely makes sure you are awake, as you can only disable that loud alarm by tapping your smartphone with an NFC chip. Ideally if your chip is somewhere away from bed, this is sure to have you wide awake once the alarm goes off. It also adds some other cool features like solving puzzles and math questions before disabling the alarm, which are pretty cool.

4.Business Card Holder with NFC is another cool trick for all the business minds and marketing executives out there. With a simple tap to your client’s NFC enabled smartphone, you can provide your clients with contact details or basically your entire business card. This is a neat app as it means you don’t have to carry those cards with you all the time. This also means less paper wastage, and for once, your client might just be able to reach you when required as I never keep those paper cards with me for more than a day! However its also a cool app for anyone else to exchange contact information with style!

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So that’s it! My round up of the best NFC apps available in the Google Play store for Android. There are many other apps out there and the market is ever growing, but these are my favorite and work very well for my day to day needs!