NFC is an acronym for Near Field Communication, a technology developed to connect devices wirelessly, at short range and at high frequencies so that several devices can share files with each other. The NFC devices communicate by induction in a magnetic field generating said field through small spiral-shaped antennas introduced inside the device.
There are 2 types of NFC communication:
- Active: Both devices generate their own fields to transfer the data for them.
- Passive: One of the devices creates a field and the other takes advantage of it to transfer the data.
The method used is used, both the transmitter and the receiver must be compatible with this technology in order to communicate with each other.
As we have said, NFC connections are designed specifically to exchange files between devices, for example, between 2 smartphones, but they are also used to read smart cards with an NFC chip that can contain all kinds of information, for example, system configurations.
By default, the NFC connections of an Android device are disabled, among other things, to save battery power. If we are going to make use of this function we must manually activate the magnetic connections of this technology from the system settings. For this we must open the settings menu and in the wireless section select "More".
There we should look at 2 sections:
The second option depends on the first, so if NFC is disabled, Android Beam will not work. If we activate the first of them we will be allowing our device to establish magnetic and wireless connections with other smartphones, for example, to send data from one smartphone to another.
Android Beam uses these communications to send specific data quickly, for example, contacts, links, web pages, YouTube videos, etc.
If we are not going to use this technology, it is best to leave it disabled so that we will save battery and avoid other users trying to establish a connection with us. The ideal would be to activate only these communications when we go to make use of them.