***** The Official Galaxy Nexus Thread *****

@meths and others

Re Google Wallet introduction in the UK. The big issue is the lack of NFC readers at retailers --- in fact the numbers of them in the US which has introduced Google Wallet is in the thousands to maybe hundred thousand rather than million. Reading about Verifone (manufacturer of NFC readers and member of Google Wallet consortium), recall such a reader costs the retailers up to $ 200 so to rip out the current non-NFC reader requires faith on part of retailer or customers asking for its convenience and figuring it will help retailer gain more sales. My thinking is that someone will need to offer incentives. Google believes that the retailer should be the one and that retailer will recoup monies through a variety of ways including more traffic, ability to offer coupons, etc. Carriers/operators see this as a way to become more relevant so they may offer retailers incentives. Here is an article I saw today which frames the dilemma in UK fairly well, despite Boris' promise to make the Olympics the first cashless one. Sadly it might require Apple to get behind the idea to make it really take off, according to one comment.:

Why can’t operators seize the reins for NFC to take off?
Mon, 16 Jan 2012 | By Ronan Shields
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The time for hype is over, showing people how to make mobile payments is what’s needed if it’s ever going to take off.


This year more has kicked off with feverish anticipation about the growth of mobile payments and especially those using NFC technology.

I don’t know if it’s the fact that the UK, one of the few markets to have launched mobile payments using NFC, will be hosting the Olympics or that London mayor Boris Johnson has already dubbed the tournament “the cashless games”.


Either way, the excitement’s building as more and more handsets come on to the market.

However, mobile payments are still a long way from becoming mainstream and NFC’s status as the mobile payments tech standard is far from fait accompli.

This point was underlined last week when polling company YouGov released its Mobile Wallet study, which revealed that just one fifth (20%) of contactless card owners, which use NFC technology, have ever used their cards to make a contactless payment.

YouGov’s survey also revealed that 27% of contactless technology owners cite the lack of retailers offering the service as the main reason why they do not use their cards (nma.co.uk 13 January 2012).

Despite leading brands from the high street and technology industries supporting NFC, 67% of respondents in the survey were unaware of which banks offered the service.

What’s clear is that education is needed if the technology is to become mainstream, although it’s unsure who should lead the initial charge, the technology sector or the high street?

Although YouGov’s report suggested that it’s up to the banks and other financial institutions to educate the public, I believe it’s the mobile operators that are best placed to lead the education.

Perhaps retailers, banks and other parties could support this either by jointly funding any such drive and underlining the same “lessons” in their outlets?

The mobile operators are best able to advice a user on which handsets have NFC capability or possibly provide handset peripherals that could facilitate in-store mobile payments.

After all, Everything Everywhere’s Orange already has a mobile payments offering in place but the company is not exactly breaking its back to promote its Quick Tap series. Neither is it keen to share user numbers (nma.co.uk 7 December 2011).

A tremendous opportunity for operators to assert themselves at the centre of the mobile payments ecosystem is in danger of being lost.

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READERS' COMMENTS (3)
Peter Matthews | Mon, 16 Jan 2012 5:51 pm
Retailers are not likely to invest in kit that makes transactions more expensive for themselves. The current contactless bank cards are RFID and the issuers of these cards are expecting retailers to accept them for small value transactions instead of cash. Not many do, as we have seen. Will those that do now throw out their current readers and buy new NFC readers? Think not. Given that mobile operators will add another layer of cost to a transaction, NFC as currently defined is going to be a while coming... What's needed in a deflationary market is a cheaper way of conducting transactions, not a more expensive one.
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Mike Halstead | Mon, 16 Jan 2012 6:35 pm
NFC - "Not for consumers" or maybe NFCY - "not for consumers yet". I agree the education process must be both mobile operators and the High Street. The Olympics will be a natural platform. There still seems to be more talk than action, not the route to Gold in 2012.
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David Stone | Mon, 16 Jan 2012 11:49 pm
There is a big marketing job to be done here. The industry sometimes appears more tariff focussed than education focussed, which leaves the consumer completely confused. The Apple IPhone has been the game changer. Perhaps if we see NFC on the IPhone, consumers, banks and retailers will start to join the party?
David Stone, MSc.
 
Reading about Verifone (manufacturer of NFC readers and member of Google Wallet consortium), recall such a reader costs the retailers up to $ 200 so to rip out the current non-NFC reader requires faith on part of retailer or customers asking for its convenience and figuring it will help retailer gain more sales.

I can tell you this isn't the case. I'm a bit confused by your post, if it's a quote or you're thoughts/findings.

I work in a shop that has 20 till points, I think the most it cost was £75 per till to have contactless payment installed. There is no ripping out of readers, simply an attachment on the top of our current readers. Although, I do believe when we last changed readers, we chose the current ones as they would allow this attachment, so I guess it might not be as easy on others.

All in all, not a bad costing for speeding up a transaction like it does.
 
@AndyCr15

Just to clarify, this post incorporated an article from New Age Media, a UK publication that was written by Ronan Shields. I thought it relevant to our discussions above so pasted it for reference.

When you say your shop had contactless payment feature added, I assume your readers were still new enough to allow the attachment. Many readers are not. The $ 200 (approx £ 125) therefore assumes a new install I believe.

The point is, with retailer margins often quite small, invest in new tech is often driven by customer demand for it.....a sort of snowball effect....as your competitor installs it and notes that it drives more sales. Will the network operators subsidize these NFC enabled readers to get adoption rates high quickly? That seems to be the point the Ronan was making in his article. Do you see Vodafone et al doing this in the UK? I doubt Google would pay for them to get Google Wallet going but just my opinion.
 
Is there anyway to scroll through text that I have typed?

Reason I ask is if I spot a typo I have to press where I want the cursor, and I find sometimes these presses are not 100% accurate.

What with the lack of a track ball, I haven't figured out a way to scroll through text.

I hope that makes sense.
 
Depends on the keyboard. You're after a scroller which is present on Swype for example (swype from swypekey to sym)

Honestly, until contactless is made quicker it's really not going to win hearts and minds. IMO the reason EE will not promote the contactless Barclaycard is because it is a complete pig to use and being associated with something that is slower than an existing solution (C&P) isn't good for business.

In all seriousness, to use the Barclaycard Ora thing you need to launch an app, put in your pin, wait for it to connect and pay, cashiers don't know how to work it a lot of the time and it's designed for smaller payments and quick transactions - the latter is pretty much impossible with the way the system works currently :/
 
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Don't forget, when we talk about the up take of it, we're not necessarily talking about phones. My Credit Card has had it for around 3 years, retailers are gradually now seeing the benefit.

For even just £125 on a terminal, if I can cut a transaction from 30 seconds to 7 seconds, it's money worth investing.
 
Don't forget, when we talk about the up take of it, we're not necessarily talking about phones. My Credit Card has had it for around 3 years, retailers are gradually now seeing the benefit.

For even just £125 on a terminal, if I can cut a transaction from 30 seconds to 7 seconds, it's money worth investing.

The problem is that a very small % of transactions will be cut from 30 seconds to 7 due to the sheer amount of people who just don't get contactless payment.

I consider myself pretty up to date with technology and it's definitely not clear to me if the terminal I'm using does or doesn't use contactless technology. Usually I only notice that the terminal accepts it once I've caught sight the contactless logo, which is usually once I've already inserted my card to pay via chip and pin.

The copious amounts of posts I've seen on forums along the lines of "I used it in Greggs and McDonalds, the shop assistant was amazed and had to check with the manager that my payment method was valid (I've actually read this)" also shows that retailers aren't really getting it either.

Hopefully it will become more common and eventually break the chip and pin habit.
 
Exactly. It will become more and more common. As you say, loads of people already know they can use it at McDonalds and Greggs, were the proportion of transactions are under £15, so as it becomes bigger, a great deal of time can be saved by the retailer.
 
Hello guys

Sorry to butt into the thread and ask this when the subject is NFC payments.

I'll be receiving a new Nexus tomorrow. It is my first Android phone and I've previously used iPhones. I use MacBook laptop. What essentials (apps, mac software, accessories) do you recommend I download or order to make the most of the Nexus?

I use Dropbox a lot to sync my documents wherever so I know I will use that extensively and I use Google's services for mail, calendar etc. and use Google Chrome as my mac's web browser.

Feel free to tell me to use the search function and read this thread a bit more! Things have probably changed since the last time the question was asked, so I thought it wouldn't hurt to ask again.

Thanks!
 
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^^

not much to say really, i think us windows folk only use the pc to drag music and video across, but of course this can be done with dropbox and other wifi apps. You might like an app called 'chrome to phone' which sends you chrome screen to mobile. I also recommend chromemarks (paid app) which syncs your chromebook marks in a great fashion, better than the google one anyway! try using google docs too, brilliant features now and nice mobile access.

when you get the phone, connect to google (use wifi) and watch all your data sync, you should also get an update as well. to take you to 4.02
 
@AndyCr15
Way back when you first posted your video to YouTube, I meant to tell you (I might have so sorry to repeat) that it was brilliant and helped lots. I highly recommend it. Very valuable to a newbie like Squarehed. In fact, if Squarehed views the video, perhaps Squarehed can let us know his comments too.
 
Back to NFC. I thought for comparison purposes to the struggles in getting it adapted in the US (Verizon blocked Google Wallet on technology grounds even though fellow CDMA spectrum competitor Sprint welcomed it on the Nexus S and soon on the Galaxy Nexus and the LG Viper and more soon) and the UK, I would share this link to the NFC introduction being made this month by Japanese carrier KDDI who is partnering with many companies and will use the Samsung Galaxy S II initially as its NFC enabled phone of choice. Goes to show how far ahead Japan is in this area now. For those of you with an interest in this field, suggest the publication NFC World:

http://www.nfcworld.com/2012/01/16/312442/kddi-launches-nfc-in-japan/

The EU has recently published a green paper calling for comments by summer 2012. There are many NFC trials being conducted in countries around the world: Spain, Italy and wait for it, Iran!
 
A bit late! Anandtech have a GN/ICS review:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5310/samsung-galaxy-nexus-ice-cream-sandwich-review

At this point, the Galaxy Nexus is awesome because of its marriage of Android 4.0 and a number of unique hardware features. I'd go so far to say that the Galaxy Nexus is without question the current best Android device, and with the improvements made in Android 4.0, first party applications and browser are now nearly as smooth as their counterparts in iOS. If OS smoothness was the thing holding you back from Android, 4.0 does a lot to change that. The Galaxy Nexus display is excellent, pentaband WCDMA on the GSM/UMTS model is exclusive only to that device, battery life isn't half bad, instant capture works well, and it has Samsung's newest LTE modem.

and

As far as Ice Cream Sandwich is concerned, it really is Android perfected. Everything is smoother, faster and nearly all of our issues with the OS have been addressed. ICS brings Android into 2012 and gives Google a great platform to begin to introduce new features going forward. Android is now very close to UI performance parity with iOS, which eliminates a major tradeoff you had to make in the past. If you were hoping for ICS to be iOS with a Google logo on it, you'll be sorely disappointed. However if you're a fan of Android and just wished it were smoother and more polished, Ice Cream Sandwich is what you've been waiting for.
 
Back to NFC. I thought for comparison purposes to the struggles in getting it adapted in the US (Verizon blocked Google Wallet on technology grounds even though fellow CDMA spectrum competitor Sprint welcomed it on the Nexus S and soon on the Galaxy Nexus and the LG Viper and more soon) and the UK, I would share this link to the NFC introduction being made this month by Japanese carrier KDDI who is partnering with many companies and will use the Samsung Galaxy S II initially as its NFC enabled phone of choice. Goes to show how far ahead Japan is in this area now. For those of you with an interest in this field, suggest the publication NFC World:

http://www.nfcworld.com/2012/01/16/312442/kddi-launches-nfc-in-japan/

The EU has recently published a green paper calling for comments by summer 2012. There are many NFC trials being conducted in countries around the world: Spain, Italy and wait for it, Iran!

The networks in the US weld a lot of power. The main 3, Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile are blocking Google Wallet as they themselves want in on the action and are setting up their own version.
 
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