New toy and new exploration on NFC

My contract with Starhub just finished and I received a $100 voucher for a new phone. I was planning to get the Note 2 or the Google Nexus 4 until I saw the Ads of the Sony Xperia Z on the web. Wow.. a water/dust-resistant phone. That bloody sounds interesting. I'm not going to touch too much on the specs here as there are tons of website out there describing it. I just want to say I am excited about this phone and it will be a game changer for Sony as they really really did their magic on this one.

Initially I was a bit sceptic as Sony Ericsson's phones on Andriod had been a complete utter lack down ever since they introduced the 1st Xperia. It's true, the overlay on the stock andriod was so heavy handed that I couldn't tell it's running on Andrioid :P It's like Samsung but at least they roll out their updates frequently and at least, much faster then the rest of the Andriod family (Asus is actually much faster but that's another story)

But after some videos and more research. I was pretty impressed not only by the specs but the interface. It's actually very close to the stock except some cosmetic changes here and there and I'm sold. Initially I was really really leaning to get the Nexus 4 as I want to get my hands on the latest andriod version and going stock on the Nexus phone is the way to go. But the phone was made by LG (eeewwww) and no microSD slot and I can't remove the battery?? And some more no LTE? hmmm.. I can't remove the battery on the Z too but at least, it gave me water resistance so I hope Google will get Sony to develop their next generation phone.

Now besides getting a new phone. I'm also getting a new toy to explore in the NFC arena. This is really awesome. A lot of people was thinking why I need this new NFC technology when there is already Bluetooth or WiFi. And they were misled that NFC is all about using it as an e-Wallet, a form of payment gateway like our ez-link card or NETS/ Credit card transactions. That is so wrong! Sony did it right this time. They are still more creative then their Korean Samsung counterpart in this department.

Bascically you can buy cheap, programmable tags on the Net to serve as a switching device. Here's my scenario. If I need to turn on my Wi-Fi hotspot on my phone to pair with my laptop or Ipad. I need to go to settings to manually tap 2 or 3 buttons to complete the necessary action. 1st, I need to turn on my WiFi, then go to hotspot and checked on the Activeate hotspot settings. True, there are widgets out there that allows you to do that but isn't it awesome that you can just turn on your phone, scan the NFC tags and it automatically runs the pre-configured macro controls for you? Some might be a bit lost on this but watch this video.

Impressed? Well, initially I thought Apple should be the one who would have thought of this but I guess it's Sony's engineers who came up with this neat idea.

Anyway, I don't think this phone will be staying with me as my missus heard of my purchase and most likely she will be hijacking my phone again ... :S I might get another one for her.... since she's the one who always bring her phone to the toilet...