Galaxy Note has NFC onboard AT&T locks it, Ma’Bell’s Galaxy Note Fails

Galaxy Note has NFC onboard AT&T locks it, Ma’Bell’s Galaxy Note Fails

Just a couple of weeks ago at CES, Samsung told NFC Rumors that the Galaxy Note did not have NFC capabilities. We took a spin around the Android OS and at the software level at least, this appeared to be confirmed. However, Samsung has now done its own tear down on the LTE device and what do we see? Yep, NFC is there. The IC can be clearly seen and the back cover sports an NFC antenna. This means Samsung was either not telling the full truth at CES or their show staff had no idea what was going on. Samsung Tomorrow reports that the specs of the torn down device exactly match the version heading to AT&T. So what gives?

Greed stops Galaxy Note getting NFC?

As if you had to ask. This is yet another example of AT&T turning off the NFC feature in the smartphones it offers. Isis isn’t ready to exploit some not-so-hard earned cash out of businesses and developers yet, so AT&T has decided to shut off NFC in the Galaxy Note. Of course, it probably won’t take very long at all for the developers over at XDA to correct that little omission, but that will mean routing your phone. Another interesting feature that wasn’t identified in the tear down is a secure element. It may well be lurking in there somewhere, but Isis intends to use NFC SIM cards so they can own consumers’ ability to use secured NFC apps. So, AT&T may well have asked for the much needed secure element to be nixed from its version of the Galaxy Note.

All and all, AT&T once again gets a big fat fail for not giving consumers the capabilities they are paying for, whether that be simply reading an NFC tag, swapping contact details or anything else. Creating NFC awareness by giving users use cases and NFC capabilities? Don’t look to AT&T for that or their iteration of the Galaxy Note until they decide it needs a software update to enable NFC. So, if you are wanting the Galaxy Note and are just happy to wait for NFC, it’s probably still a go, but for the majority of us NFC fans, it’s yet another no-go – thanks AT&T!