In the last GSMA myself almost 400 trialists experienced a good representation of ecosystem, it was possible to buy any good (full coverage here).

The follow pictures show the device used during the trial made by Samsung; it is very impressive how Samsung (and LG) are recovering time lost during last couple of years.

Trial NFC Package

The above package is what the trailist received the follow picture shown what is in the box.

Box Content 1/2

Box Content 2/2

This is how the handset appears on the back.

Under the cover

And this is the front view.

Handset Front

The following photo shows instead the receipt after my purchase. A good video here for a real shop experience in Barcelona during last GSMA.

Shop receipt

Nokia NFC ?

Trying to find Nokia handset pavillion to ask them their position on the NFC has been very hard during the conference, since it was outside; according to  NFC Times Nokia has quietly pulled the plug on its 6216 NFC phone, which was to be its first commercial model supporting a standard connection to the SIM card for storing payment and ticketing applications.

Nokia, which had still been promising the NFC handset late last year, notified some operators and development partners within the past few weeks that it would not put the phone into production, sources told NFC Times.

The 6216 had originally been promised in the third quarter of 2009, but delays had set back the commercial launch to early 2010. But by that time, demand had dried up from mobile operators, which had turned their attention to more stylish NFC models supporting the single-wire protocol connection to the SIM, such as the Samsung S5230. The NFC version of the touch-screen S5230, known as the Star or Player One in some markets, is due out this spring.

Operators in France, Spain and Italy, among others, passed on the Nokia 6216 for their trials or other commercial projects planned for the first or second quarters of this year. The 6216, a mid-tier 3G feature phone, fared no better in Asia.

But Nokia is not anymore alone, in fact here a couple of phones ready to NFC transactions, LG and Samsung phone at G&D booth.

Two asian brothers ...

If you are not so lucky to find an handset to interact with NFC devices, you can still use a sticker, there are two kind of NFC stickers available on the market nowadays:

  • dumb stickers – they don’t interact with the handset, they are all in all a plastic ISO card in a small dimension (G&D and several Card produce it).
  • smart stickers – they interact with handset through bluetooth, so a Telco Operator or any application provider could provision application via OTA and then via bluetooth could reach Secure Element within the sticker. During the interaction bluetooth need to be switched on both device (sticker and handset).

Sagem Orga NFC Bluetooth sticker

A lot of RF-SIM and RF-MicroSD has been presented during the show, unfortunately even if a lot of MicroSD are on the side of the handset (such as BlackBerries, Nokia, …) SIM cards are often under the battery, so any magnetic field hardly reach them. To eliminate this inconvenient SIM Card and microSD providers found the solution, available for almost any handset; it is a micro film containing antenna and NFC radio Chip.

Located over the battery and under the cover  it interacts well with external devices and talks with the secure element in the SIM or in the microSD. We see in the picture below a Blackberry with a special microSD radio extension and right-below a microSD equipped with NFC radio chip and antenna.

Microfilm expanding microSD NFC field in a BlackBerry

The next photo shows a  microfilm presented by Motorola, it expands the SIM scope, transforming a normal clamshell phone to a real NFC phone, the film is inserted between the SIM Card and the SIM card connector in the handset, it intercepts any message to a from the SIM and manage communications on the special C6 contact (SWP). All the part needed by an headset manufacturer to transform its phone in an NFC one are present in the film.

Motorola microfilm for a clamshell headset