There’s an unsubstantiated rumor floating around that the Nokia C7, Finland’s second Symbian^3 device to start shipping, the first being the N8, has NFC capabilities built in, but due to being rushed to market the software written to support said internal hardware wasn’t included. In the future however Nokia will issue a software upgrade that will make the C7 one of the first mass market devices with near field communication built in. Now if this is true, and it may just be a PR snafu, then I’ve got to wonder what the hell Nokia was thinking. Symbian^3 was supposed to have NFC built in right from the start, but typical Nokia processes and bureaucracy meant schedules slipped and the awesome long awaited feature was pushed back to Symbian^4. Earlier this year Anssi Vanjoki himself, the guy who practically invented what Nokia is today and decided to leave the company after he wasn’t made CEO, was quoted as saying that all smartphones coming out of Nokia in 2011 will have NFC. It was only until later when the public relations team was doing damage control that it became “Symbian^4 devices, not all smartphones“.
Does this mean that the Nokia C7 was supposed to be running a later version of Symbian, or that it was supposed to be the first Symbian device with NFC, but because Symbian^3 had to drop features to make it out to market on time the final bits couldn’t be added? Whatever the case may be, I firmly believe that technology often drives change. As much as we all say it’s all about software and services that make smartphones what they are today, it is because of technological advances that such applications could be built in the first place. The first revolution was voice on the go, then SMS, then the mobile internet, more recently it was GPS, but NFC … oh boy, that’s going to change everything.
Can’t wait.