The other day we talked about UK’s first large scale pilot of NFC (Near Field Communications) technology on mobile phones.
The trial of the O2 Wallet paves the way for the mass market use of mobile phones to pay for purchases, access events or even be used as Oyster cards for travel around London, simply by touching the phone to a reader.
The trial, which will involve over 500 people invited from the O2 customer base, takes place across selected sites throughout London and began yesterday running for six months until the end of May 2008. In that way, each trialist will be given a Nokia 6131 NFC handset installed with the O2 Wallet installed.
This Nokia mobile phone, presented in January in CES Las Vegas, includes Near Field Communications (NFC) technology to enable information sharing, service initiation and payment & ticketing capability with one tap of the device. Used in much the same way as existing contactless cards and keytags to allow access and make small payments, the addition of NFC technology to a full featured mobile device adds an entirely new level of capability by leveraging the phone’s computing power, wireless Internet access and user interface.
Its main characteristics are:
- Quad band
- Symbian Series 40 OS
- 2.2” QVGA TFT main display with up to 16.7 million true colors (240 x 320 pixels)
- External cover display 1.36” TFT screen (128 x 160 pixels)
- A built-in digital music player with microSD card support
- FM stereo radio
- 1.3 megapixel camera with 8x digital zoom
- Bluetooth wireless technology
- MIDP 2.0
- Volume: 75 cc
- Weight: 104 g
- Dimensions: 92 x 47 x 20 mm
Nokia press release
Nokia 6131 NFC webpage
