Remember when HP showed off transferring webpages from the TouchPad tablet to the Pre 3 simply by touching? Remember thinking “Wow, that’d be cool if i myself had a TouchPad and a Pre 3?” Android Beam is the reply to that problem, a version of that same functionality that works across NFC-devices running Ice Cream Sandwich — namely, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. We got the likelihood to play with a couple of phones that had the ideal software builds and batteries, and located the functionality to be quick and useful — when things weren’t crashing. More after the break.
The NFC circuitry within the Galaxy Nexus is indeed built into the battery, not the backplate, and by touching two devices together you possibly can exchange a mess of items. The stock demo is naturally exchanging websites, but contacts will also be swapped, along side directions or even apps — well, links to apps. Touch one phone to a different and it will elevate the entry within the Android Market. Sadly no direct pushes of APKs.
Apps would be ready to tie into this and do whatever they prefer down the street, so we should always see some interesting applications for games and so forth once Ice Cream Sandwich starts to be deployed on more devices. Hopefully by then things could be a bit of more reliable, as we managed to crash the demo exchanging one address to a different device. It’s still just pre-release software, remember.
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