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Comment by alexfringes | Hacker News Reader

Another step towards NFC being skipped as a truly impactful technology?

Let's be realistic, all the signs of this point to "acquihire". The statement on their page doesn't give a real convincing feeling that Google bought them in order to make this concept a ubiquitous part of Android or anything like that.

Bump is/was "neat". I downloaded the app the instant I heard about it, 4 years ago? In all that time I never "bumped" with another person. I exchange about 700 business cards per year. For the first 18 months, and then a couple of random times later, I'd ask people "do you have Bump?", met with nothing but odd stares. NOBODY every asked me or suggested we us an app to exchange contact info.

I love the idea, but it just doesn't seem to have taken off. Not to mention that (IMO) this was a little more of a "feature" than a "product".

Don't get me wrong, they built something cool, gots lots of users and presumably lots of active users, and managed to get acquired by Google. I have tons of respect for the team, but I don't think you can draw any conclusions from this acquisition as it relates to NFC or anything else.

How is it being skipped? As an example, parking meters in San Francisco are almost all NFC-equipped. Google's flagship phones have all been NFC-enabled. The future looks bright for NFC...

I don't see mobile wallets going too far until Apple gets on board. And that's a big if at this point, seeing as there won't be any NFC on Apple devices for at least another year.

I think a barrier at least equally as large in some places will be that it's only really on flagships - if it needs to be used by the masses getting it into every Android smartphone instead of a select few would be a huge step forward. In many places that would probably be more significant than Apple implementing it (although not North America, which is at a guess disproportionately significant for development effort etc)

I have a Nexus 4 and live in SF. The NFC feature on the meters almost never works. Probably 10% of the time. I have to enter the meter ID most of the time.

The biggest problem with NFC, etc... it's still significantly faster to swipe a credit card! Getting my phone out, unlocking it with a code, making sure the screen stays on while I stand in line (for e.g. Starbucks). This future is for the birds.

The future is NFC-enabled smartwatches.

I've had similar experience. I have a Galaxy Nexus and had a terrible time getting the NFC stuff to work. My friends and I stood around looking like idiots for a good 10-15 minutes trying to get basic stuff like sending contacts or files to each other. Getting a good connection was nearly impossible. Maybe it's gotten better, but boy was it terrible when I tried it.

Just take a picture of a QR code and be done with it. Works great.

What kind of hardware is more prevalent, graphical displays and cameras, or NFC hardware?

Anything you can do with NFC you can do easier (easier, not easily...) with QR codes.

NFC hardware is slightly more vandalism resistant than displays and cams. But bulletproof displays and cams are pretty tough, and if you're going to have to put up a cam to protect the NFC hardware, may as well go all QR code.

If you want NFC, the easiest way to get it is to look in your wallet for a Master Card. Call the phone number on the Master Card, ask for a PayPass. I stick the paypass to the inside of my wallet. It works 100% of the time, with no unlocking or launching an app. I don't open my wallet, just put it close to the machine, and it works without issue.

The problem of PayPass, though, is that some stores just don't bother maintaining their PayPass reader so it works.

Half a time, it either doesn't work, or I've seen cases a store person not knowing how to interpret the fact that payment was accepted or not.

Rather than going through this, it's just easier to just take out the card and use that instead. Another thing about those NFC methods, considering they are relatively new technology, is that they are not seeing something tangible and it apparently makes a store person bit nervous when it doesn't work. I often observed signs of hostility, perhaps, they feel like I'm trying to do something nasty, because they just don't know what that's all about.

Interesting. I have an iPhone so I'm never able to use the NFC feature. However, I find that opening the app and typing in the meter number is quite fast, since I can walk away while doing it. Also, the ability to extend my parking remotely is pretty awesome.

I agree, that is a killer feature. Except the additional charge on top of it. :(

This is the main reason why my company[0] went against the NFC route to allow mobile payments for vending machines. We were at the TC disrupt last week and everyone was downplaying NFC for anything useful. Its nice for small things like tasker, but for anything that needs to be done quick it does fair too well IMO.

[0] http://likeus.co

aha! so YOU are the culprit! the reason NFC is at the top of the page even though it is no way related to bump! You got a lot of us confused btw

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