How Microsoft degraded the Nokia NFC experience. #rant ‘Updated’

NFC stands for near field communication, its a very energy efficient method of transferring small amount of data between NFC enabled devices and/or NFC tags.
It was originally meant to be the way we transact money, needless to say this dream is still dying soon after every revival attempt any major company pushes.
(Google tried it, Nokia tried it and lets say they both failed miserably)

However Nokia didn’t throw away the technology but rather transformed it into something more, it started creating peripherals that use it, reducing horrendous BT paring setups to a single tap.

Nokia also used it to share stuff between other Nokias but nothing compares to how Nokia approach the photo sharing experience through NFC, it was a bless.

In 2011 I was still rocking my Nokia N9, NFC was useless to me back then as I didn’t have any other NFC enabled device to use it with.

I bought the Nokia Play 360, I LOVED it, the instant pairing the no need to press the power button on the speaker, it was amazing!

Shortly there after I got engaged and quickly got my fiancée a Nokia C7 so typically we started taking pictures lots of them and every now and then we’d be browsing through my gallery and she’d see a photo she likes, I hold the phone tap it on her Nokia C7 and voila the picture was sent, there was the option to limit this with (ask before sending) but I didn’t need it.

In 2012 I bought the Nokia 808 and gifted my Nokia N9 to a close friend that was in love with it, it didn’t take me long to hate the downgrade in the OS coming from the Nokia N9, that’s why when the Lumia 920 was released I quickly jumped ship.

being engaged It made sense to me to give a 41mp camera phone to my fiancée, (I wasn’t wrong).
But when I tried to share a picture with her through a tap ( a feature we both enjoyed with time ) the Lumia 920 would not connect to the 808 nor the other way around. 🙁

I figured then that a Lumia to Lumia transaction would’ve been much more successful, until I bought the Lumia 720 two months ago.

Comparison:

• Nokia N9/C7/808/701 NFC photo sharing procedure goes as follows, open the gallery, open a pic you like, tap another phone with NFC and your pic is shared. (depending on the settings with or without notification.)

 

• WP8 procedure: open a pic you like and click more (…) then tap Share and then Tap + Send for those of you keeping count that’s three taps already, the feature should have been called Taps + send.

If you think this is it, you’re wrong! If you didn’t have BT switched on before hand, then the process would stop and ask you to go to the BT settings menu to enable it! (the button showed doesn’t even enable the damn BT it just lets you go to the BT setting!)
But once you come back to your picture, you’ll need to repeat the 3 taps again, Okay that’s fair.

Nope we’re not done, after you tap your phone to the other WP8, the other WP8 would stop the process and asks his holder to enable BT himself and you may have guessed it but YES YOU’LL NEED TO REPEAT AGAIN!

Ultimate fail!

 Update: A fellow commenter has expressed his anger toward me calling for firing the people responsible for implementing NFC this way which was edited out of the post by Jay.

The commenter stated that if I wanted to use this feature I just have to keep my bluetooth on all the time.

Dear commenter: is that some sort of punishment for people who want to use NFC? losing battery life? Okay no problem should I keep asking people with other WP8 phones to keep their BT on just in case?

Or are you saying NFC is a gimmick and we shouldn’t be hard on the people who implemented it in the worst way possible?

Do you think me calling for firing people is worst than your comment just there?

When do you fire people then?

• Is it when they release an OS that shuts down every time you charge while Wireless LAN on (my phone) and wouldn’t wake up until you reset your phone using the three buttons approach? kind of like a mobile Ctrl + alt + delete?   (took them 6 months to solve this by the way)  its great they marketed this phones to businesses heh?
  (this wasn’t limited to my phone BTW Google: random shutdowns Lumia 920 )

• Is it when they put an option to reset your phone and your phone gets stuck on two gears until its batteries die? ( my friend bought a Lumia 920 last month and he just gave it to me so I could flash it because of this very same problem.)  here’s the picture to prove it.

• Is it when they make connectivity options in a device that is all about connectivity, buried into a setting list that follows NO ORDER alphabetically or otherwise, my friend thought the phone doesn’t share with Bluetooth because he didn’t even see Bluetooth in the share menu, and you can only see this option if you already have Bluetooth activated. (Very good job.)
• Is it when a team manages to release a phone and pitch it to businesses without supporting VPN,  and with a limited support for any WiFi that uses alternative authentications, (while an Asha phone could connect to them no problem).
  (Google: Lumia 920 can’t connect to WiFi)
• Is it when your OS user base starts to believe that you don’t care about them and you’re only out for money? because this too has happened.Microsoft Corp typically pays its employees 15% above market compared to 11% at competing companies with 5/5 stars  job satisfaction rating according to Payscale.com, and according to Glassdoor.com Microsoft is rated 3.6 out of 5 with over 5310 ratings, filled with comments praising how good the benefits, salaries and paid vacations are.
  Microsoft has one of the friendliest work environments providing a safe place for initiatives like Gleam as part of its nondiscrimination  policies.
  So its only fair to expect more from such employees, I can’t really feel sorry or be worried about an employee who’s being treated this way and not give his 100%, specially in a world where Foxconn exists.
  

 

Tags: NFC, Rant

Category: Nokia