Bump your BlackBerrys to transfer information

Research in Motion recently launched the BlackBerry Curve 9360 and the BlackBerry Bold 9900 in India, and what’s common between these two devices (apart from the make, of course), is that they’re both equipped with NFC. What RIM plans to do now is introduce a peer to peer information transfer application like Bump (App Store - Bump) that will allow two BlackBerry users with NFC-enabled devices to transfer information from one device to the other by loading up the app, choosing what to transfer and ‘bumping’ the phones, keeping them not more than 20 centimeters apart. This is a slightly different use of NFC than what is ’trendy’ right now as the technology is mainly being developed for mobile payments. Additionally, Bump currently works on Bluetooth to transfer information not NFC.

The two phones could ‘bump’ info into one another using NFC

Of course, the stipulation is that both phones must be NFC-enabled and will most likely only work for transferring information between Blackberry devices. Which might eventually be an easy way to transfer information between the PlayBook and your BlackBerry phone if the tablet gets NFC. Certain banks already use Bump-like applications to allow users to transfer money from one account to another but of course, the limit there is if you’re a parent transferring money to the account your child who lives in another city, you won’t be able to use such a function. 

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Currently NFC works in two ways. One way, as mentioned earlier, is the mobile wallet where you can use your phone as a credit card, debit card or as tickets for public transport. The other function, is a card reader function, where you can place your mobile over NFC tags and access information from the tag, almost as if the tag is a barcode and your phone is a scanner. A museum in London is using NFC in this fashion, where visitors can hover their phones over tags assigned to certain art pieces and get information about the pieces right on their phone.