NFC just got a serious range boost, and your next smartwatch is going to love it
TL;DR The new NFC Release 15 specification increases range from 5mm to up to 2cm, making alignment less critical to initiating a compliant connection.
This extended range will make NFC connections quicker and more reliable in the future, especially for smaller devices like smart watches and smart rings.
It also introduces support for the NFC Digital Product Passport (NDPP), allowing phones to serve as payment terminals.
Unless you're picking up something in the extreme budget range, most Android phones come with NFC these days. NFC, short for Near Field Communication, is handy for contactless payments and other short-range proximity-based use cases. This short-range is getting an upgrade with the NFC Forum's latest NFC Release 15 specification.
The highlight of this NFC Release 15 specification is its extended range for certified compliant NFC contactless connections, going from the current 5mm to up to 2cm, which is a 4x increase. This may seem like a tiny change, but this extended range means that NFC chips on devices needn't be as precisely aligned as they currently need to be. This would allow NFC connections to start sooner, making the process quicker and more reliable, especially on smaller form factor devices like smartwatches and smart rings.
The range is still very short, and you still need a fair amount of user intent to initiate a connection. Still, you needn't awkwardly dance your wrist around on the payment terminal to make a payment, as both devices will have a wider acceptable area for the connection handshake.
Wait, but aren't there devices already operating at 2cm distance? Yes, there are, and this spec release creates a standard for more of them to come up, ensuring they continue to play nice with each other.
Oliver Cragg / Android Authority
Another highlight is the support for the NFC Digital Product Passport (NDPP) standard, which allows you to use your mobile phone as a payment terminal instead of requiring a dedicated device. More technically, the standard includes a data-agnostic framework that allows a single NFC tag embedded in a product to store and transmit both standard and extended DPP data using common NFC Data Exchange Format (NDEF) records.
NFC Release 15 will be made available to adopter-level members and the public sometime in Fall 2025, and the certification compliance process will also begin then. Higher-level NFC Forum members can already download the Technical Specifications for this NFC Release 15. As you can imagine, products compatible with the specification will take a while to reach the market, but I am optimistic about the future.
Got a tip? Talk to us! Email our staff at
Email our staff at news@androidauthority.com . You can stay anonymous or get credit for the info, it's your choice.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Forbes
14 minutes ago
- Forbes
How Workplace AI Is Both A Lifeline And A Landmine For Disabled Employees
In 2025, artificial intelligence is transforming the workplace for everyone, regardless of ability, but for workers with disabilities, the critical stakes governing both threats and opportunities remain, as ever, unique and highly personalized. First, the good news. AI has the potential to transform working life for disabled staff in several important ways. The core promise is enhanced accessibility. Though not yet at a level where it can operate entirely independently from human oversight, AI holds the potential to remediate on an industrial scale vast swathes of material that are inaccessible to workers with disabilities. This might include websites and documents that were previously indecipherable to screen readers or videos that lack captions for the hard of hearing. Those with sensory processing differences arising from neurodiversity and dyslexia can use AI to create highly personalized content such as concise, easy-read summaries or customized fonts, spacing, and colors. Though this is an opportunity that exists across the board, not just for employees with disabilities, new technologies such as agentic AI, which is now being rolled into everyday platforms like OpenAI's ChatGPT, are fostering an important workplace skills reset. In short, over the next few years, employees with the highest level of proficiency in deploying AI tools stand to gain the most. Why this might matter to employees with disabilities is that such individuals are often natural productivity hackers. Innovating through devising shortcuts and alternatives is often a key requirement of life with a disability, as is an appetite for identifying and becoming early adopters of technologies with the potential to make life that bit easier. Being watched Sadly, on the flipside, there is a much darker side to workplace AI for people with disabilities. This can be seen in the disproportionate impact that the growing proliferation of productivity surveillance tools has on this population. Undoubtedly buoyed by a wave of post-pandemic return-to-office mandates, including a directive from U.S. President Donald Trump for federal employees to cease working from home shortly after he returned to office, the workplace surveillance market is expected to grow to $4.5 billion by 2026. Algorithmic and AI-based workplace tracking tools can include anything from keystroke and mouse movement monitors to video monitoring software that can not only provide snapshots of an employee's computer screen but also a live video feed of the person at their desk. Additionally, some tools can track a person's exact location in the office, and there are those that measure physical output in environments such as warehouses. Nowadays, this type of tech has become so pervasive that it can also monitor a worker's bodily functions directly through health and well-being apps that are offered by the employer, often within a wrapper of employee benefit packages. Such technologies are not on the periphery either but are now, under the guise of employers needing to make data-driven decisions to boost both profits and employee productivity, being deployed by many renowned brands such as PWC, UnitedHealth Group and Elon Musk's AI startup xAI. Although many employees may somewhat justifiably have concerns, a 2023 Pew Research study found that 56 percent of U.S. workers are against the use of AI tools that track employee location, while 61 percent oppose monitoring employees' movements. However, it is potentially those workers with disabilities who have the most to lose. That's because the data that has been used to build the tools themselves uses metrics such as the typical output that might be expected of a non-disabled worker. These might include aspects like how many bathroom breaks an employee might have throughout the day. How long an individual should be able to remain seated at their desk for a single session could be another criterion. Unfortunately, workers with disabilities often fall outside of these 'norms' and therefore risk being flagged by AI systems for indiscipline or review by senior management. Writing for the American Bar Association last month, Ariana Aboulafia, Project Lead, Disability Rights in Technology Policy at the Center for Democracy & Technology, posited, 'Worker surveillance issues are inextricably tied to disability rights. These tools are often used in many different employment contexts and to the detriment of the privacy and civil rights of workers. Even though they seem like something out of dystopian fiction, they may very well be used by your employer right now or by your next employer. It is vital that workers are aware of the potential presence of these tools and that employers are aware of their impacts so that they can mitigate harms—or even choose not to use these tools at all.' Common sense might dictate that something as simple as disability disclosure from the employee might be the way out of this trap. That way, the employer would be able to take the disability into account when considering the surveillance metrics. The reality is, however, in today's competitive workplace, if an employee has the option of not revealing their disability status to their employer, they may well be inclined to remain tight-lipped for a whole host of reasons. Not least a fear of discrimination and negative attitudes from management and colleagues. Equally, in 2025, it's no longer far-fetched to believe that individuals of all abilities are becoming increasingly fearful that agentic AI may be set to take their jobs in the near future and will therefore do everything they can to avoid being perceived as risky or less valuable to the organization. In this context, it would seem like workplace AI surveillance is here to stay, with the next best option being to build as robust a framework as possible for how to use the tools responsibly and to recognize the types of cases where they might not be telling the employer the whole story.
Wall Street Journal
38 minutes ago
- Wall Street Journal
Podcast: Are Stablecoins the Future of Payments?
Dan Dolev, a senior financial-technology analyst at investment firm Mizuho Americas, joins WSJ's Take On the Week to explore the burgeoning world of stablecoins. Dolev offers insights into Circle Internet Group's revenue streams, whether stablecoins can disrupt Visa and Mastercard's payment network and their broader implications for international money transfers. Plus, our hosts dig into how investors could grapple with the prospect of less-reliable economic data in the future. Circle reports its earnings Tuesday. 🎧 Listen to the podcast here, or 📹 watch the video version below:
Yahoo
39 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Elon Musk is trying to pit ChatGPT against its owner as his feud with Sam Altman escalates
Elon Musk is upping the ante in his feud with Sam Altman, and using ChatGPT to do it. Musk posted a screenshot of a query to ChatGPT, asking if he or Altman was "more trustworthy." Musk's screenshot said ChatGPT picked him. Elon Musk is turning to ChatGPT to adjudicate his long-running feud with Sam Altman. Musk posted a screenshot of a query to ChatGPT 5 Pro on Tuesday, asking if he or Altman was "more trustworthy." ChatGPT chose Musk. "There you have it," Musk wrote. Business Insider posed the same query as Musk to ChatGPT eight times, testing it across the GPT 5 Pro, GPT 5 Thinking, and GPT 5 models. ChatGPT picked Musk once, while it was set to GPT-5 Thinking. The rest of the attempts returned Altman, including when it was toggled to GPT-5 Thinking again. Musk and OpenAI did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider. Later, Musk posted the screenshot in response to an X post from OpenAI's ChatGPT account. The account had shared a query to Musk's chatbot, Grok, asking if Musk was right to say Apple had committed antitrust violations. Musk threatened to sue Apple on Monday over what he said was its bias toward OpenAI on the App Store. But Grok — in a response reposted by the official ChatGPT X account — disagreed with Musk's opinion of the Apple rankings. "Good bot," the OpenAI-affiliated account said of Grok's response, adding that Grok was very "truth-seeking." "You too," Musk replied. Musk cofounded OpenAI with Altman in 2015 but left its board in 2018. Since then, Musk has publicly criticized Altman's leadership of OpenAI. Last year, Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing the company of violating its nonprofit mission when it partnered with Microsoft. Musk launched his AI startup, xAI, in July 2023. Grok, its first chatbot, was released in the same year. Musk isn't the only one who has tried to pit a chatbot against its creator. In May, Altman asked Grok if it would pick him or Musk to lead the AI arms race if the fate of humanity was at stake. "If forced, I'd lean toward Musk for his safety emphasis, critical for humanity's survival, though Altman's accessibility is vital. Ideally, their strengths should combine with regulation to ensure AI benefits all," Grok said in response to Altman's query. Read the original article on Business Insider Solve the daily Crossword
