The Nokia Astound (aka C7) will be launched on April 6 and will cost $79.99. Most likely you know about this, but do you know that Astound will come with a NFC chip inside and that you will have to turn it on? If you have followed the events at CTIA 2011, you should already know that this functionality was tested at the CTIA 2011 show.
The NFC chip allows you to pay from your mobile, get a remote access and do many other things. At the event, 500 Nokia C7s could use the bCard Reader technology, since they were connected to each other and could scan their ID tags when networking.
So now we know Nokia C7 will have an NFC chip, but you need to turn it on manually. Here is what Nokia’s spokesman said:
“The Nokia Astound includes an NFC chip and the device software supports its functionality. The Astound will ship with NFC turned off, but a user can enable it by entering the device settings and turning it on.”
There could be only one reason why Nokia hadn’t turned it on; probably, they didn’t do it to prevent unnecessary battery drain, since there will be many buyers who won’t use this feature. I think so because Google, PayPal and the carriers with the ISIS project are doing the first steps in NFC payment system, and we expect they will provide wider services in 2012. So as the Nokia Astound will be launched via T-Mobile in the US, it is logical to suppose the NFC functionality won’t be used until that time.
$80 is quite an affordable price for such a device, which, apart from the above mentioned features, also provides a portrait QWERTY keyboard and probably a new user interface.
