Nokia C7 Astound to get NFC turned on in August update. Nokia goes NFC crazy and launches NFC hub!

The wait is nearly over for Nokia C7 Astound owners to have NFC turned on thanks to an update that Nokia is prepping to send out in July or August. Angry Bird Magic players celebrate.

The Nokia C7 Astound has been on sale since late last year and was quietly reputed as being an NFC phone. Since then, many Nokia C7 Astound owners have searched on methods to enable the NFC portion of their phones to no avail because the Nokia C7 Astound NFC card had not been activated by software. That appears to be set to change either this or next month as part of an update to the Symbian Anna OS.

Nokia begins its NFC campaign with the Nokia C7 Astound and the Nokia N9 this year

We have known that Nokia has been supportive of NFC for some time and this was confirmed when the Nokia C7 Astound was released. Since then, the Nokia N9 has been announced with accompanying Nokia’s Play 360 Bluetooth NFC Speakers and the Nokia Wireless Music Receiver MD-310 that both feature NFC connections that hand off to Bluetooth. Since then, we have also seen the unannounced Nokia Zeta NFC phone that takes on a smaller form factor and runs on the newest Symbian OS Belle.

Nokia NFC Marketing Campaigns

Anyone that doubts how serious Nokia is about aligning itself with NFC should check out NFC hub, a Nokia website that provides information and tools for marketing agencies and small businesses who want to create NFC smartposter campaigns. The Nokia website focuses on embedding Facebook likes, Twitter follows, business cards and smartposters that are all NFC-enabled. At the moment, the website is focused on enabling the UK, who appear to be a few months ahead of the rest of the world with the exceptions of Japan and South Korea, with tools to implement NFC in many expected facets.  The website also features FourSquare, which has recently developed applications for a host of Nokia devices and claims that its users total 10 million. It will see its NFC debut on the Nokia C7 Astound this summer. See the videos below.

With the new update, Nokia C7 Astound device sales could be set to go through the roof. Although, the device does not support mobile payments due to the lack of a secure element and the software required to use  third party SIM or microSD secure element. Nokia thus far has continued to promote Open NFC, which is a standard that doesn’t require a secure element and is based more on device connections, games and smartposter interactions, but rumors suggest that is due to change in upcoming devices. New rumors circulating at the moment even suggest that the Nokia could launch NFC smartphones that ship with secure elements. However, we will have to wait for more information on that rumor before it can be confirmed. For now, the big news is that the Nokia C7 Astound is being NFC-enabled some time in the not too distant future.