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NFC apps: our favourite five from Nokia Store

With Nokia delivering more and more handsets featuring NFC technology, we think it’s fair to say that NFC is here to stay. Whether you own a Nokia 701, a Nokia N9 or a Nokia Lumia 610 NFC, you’ll know that tapping your phone against certain devices, posters or cards will prompt your phone to perform a particular task. The Nokia Store has a number of NFC apps available, and here are our favourite five.

Before we get stuck into the apps, if you’re not familiar with how NFC works or where it’s been (or being) used, take a look through some of the NFC posts we’ve written lately.

Now that you’re up-to-speed, let’s crack on with the NFC apps, available for your Nokia smartphone.

NFC Tag Writer – Nokia N9

NFC Tag Writer

If you’ve got an NFC tag and want to know what its for, then NFC Tag Writer is a good little tool. Selecting the Read Tag mode then prompts you to tap your phone against a tag where it’ll tell you what sort of tag it is, the details stored on that tag – people’s contact details, or a web address, for example.

The main menu also offers the option to write your own NFC tags in a number of different forms. You can create your own NFC tags containing a piece of text, a URL, a VCard (business card), or a smart poster. However, you’ll need to purchase some blank NFC tags to do this, or use some old ones you’re not using anymore.

Fruit Ninja – NFC – Nokia 701

Fruit Ninja Arcade

When it comes to preparing a fruit salad, we usually chop up some fruit in the kitchen and stick any survivors (ones that we don’t eat) into a bowl. That’s the boring way to prepare fruit. A more fun way would be to slash them all with a samurai sword. However, I’m sure that’s probably illegal an definitely too dangerous. Fruit Ninja allows you to have such fun, while being safe.

As the fruit is propelled across your screen, swipe your finger over the fruit to see it destroyed before your very eyes with juicy, messy, destructive fun. There’s three game-modes to chose from, each one trickier then the last. Rack up as many points as you can on your slashathon.

Here’s where’s the NFC kicks-in. Touch your NFC-enabled phone against another Nokia 500, 600 or 700 to unlock special content.

PokenMobile for Symbian – Nokia C7

If you’re a big NFC-junkie and you just can’t help touching your phone against all the NFC tags you come across, then this app is for you.

PokenMobile enables you to save all the digital information that’s stored in the real-world, such as NFC-based coupons, vouchers and multimedia information right into your phone.

You can also create yourself a social business card so that you can share your online profiles with anybody else who has an NFC-enabled phone with PokenMobile installed. With the ability to store over 50 social networks, we’re sure you’ll be on at least one of them.

Foursquare for Symbian and MeeGo

It’s all about location, location, location. Or so the real estate agents tell us. When it comes to locations, nobody shares your location better than Foursquare – which currently has over 20 million registered users.

Foursquare is predominately used to share your location with your friends or family on social networks. The app finds your location using GPS, you check-in to the place you’re at and all your friends know where you are. It’s perfect for when you’re looking for things to do and a friend pop ups as being in your neighbourhood.

This NFC version is no different from the non-NFC version, besides the fact that you can now check-in by just touching your phone against an NFC tag at a location, much like the Nokia Vending Machine at Nokia World 2011. It’s a much faster way of checking-in and sharing your location.

FidMe – Symbian, Windows Phone, and Series 40.

FidMe and QR code

If you’ve ever purchased anything in the past decade, you’ll almost certainly have been offered a loyalty card at some point. Some of them you may have accepted and some you might’ve rejected due to the fact you already own too many loyalty cards.

FidMe is a loyalty card storage app that holds all of those loyalty cards in one place, replacing the never-ending pile that’s building up in your wallet or purse. Using NFC you can use your loyalty card when you’re making a purchase to redeem whatever reward their offering.

Are you an NFC user? Tell us what apps you use to make the most of NFC.