BlackBerry Tag brings NFC sharing between phones

BlackBerry Tag brings NFC sharing between phones
BlackBerry bringing a beepy future

RIM has announced the new BlackBerry Tag service, utilising the NFC capabilities of its recent smartphones.

TechRadar exclusively revealed that RIM was working on enabling NFC BBM contact sharing at the launch of the BlackBerry Curve 9360, and now RIM has added that functionality in, with a host of extra applications too.

The BlackBerry Tag service will also allow users to share contact information, files, photos and other multimedia content by opening up the NFC gateway on the phone and tapping the phones together to initiate the transfer.

RIM has also promised to open up the BlackBerry Tag API to app developers too, so new applications can take advantage of the NFC functionality to create new ways of interacting with other phones.

NFC-ing into the future

Currently RIM has only got two phones in the UK market that can take advantage of the BlackBerry Tag service, the BlackBerry Bold 9900 and Curve 9360, but we expect nearly all future models to be enabled with the service.

Nokia has also been heavily backing the contactless technology, offering a similar service with its latest batch of Belle-enabled phones, with multimedia sharing a big part of the announcement of its new handsets.

RIM will offer the new BlackBerry Tag service when it brings a new BB OS 7 update, which it has declined to give a release date for at the moment - we're hassling to see when this will be.

Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief

Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grown with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.