Wednesday 18 September 2013

Weird noise from my phone...

Awhile back, I noticed that every so often, my phone would make a weird sound and I couldn't figure out what it was.
Turns out, it was my Galaxy Nexus responding to the NFC tags in my public transit card as well as my Paypal 2 factor authentication card in my wallet (they have NFC - who knew?) - but that the Galaxy Nexus only responds to these when the screen is unlocked. I often prop my phone up on my wallet when reading news in Google Currents during my lunchbreak, so in that case the screen is unlocked and when NFC is on, the phone will detect and read the tags in my wallet..

I do think, perhaps, that Google could introduce notifications on screen for when event noises happen that aren't otherwise followed by an onscreen activity. Like when I'm in Maps in navigation mode, and I hear a weird sound that sounds like a warning sound, but there's no onscreen prompt or notification area message.

These days, as Australian mobile carriers haven't gotten into the NFC payments arena and Melbourne's public transport system decided not to allow people to read the balance on their own transit cards (instead forcing them to either use at-station terminals or use a 48 hour old balance online), there's not much point to having NFC enabled on my handset, so I turn it off.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Hey... thanks for leaving a comment! Due to Casino spam, I've had to turn on moderation for some of the posts. Apologies - I do read every comment left!