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I need to communicate over NFC (ISO14443) with some card reader.

when i put my nexus S on Reader, logcat shows messages

02-18 13:24:00.691: DEBUG/NfcService(278): SE FIELD ACTIVATED 
02-18 13:24:00.691: DEBUG/NfcService(278): Broadcasting Intent

or theese , when card reader is trying to read

02-18 13:25:00.718: DEBUG/NFC JNI(278): > AID DETECTED
02-18 13:25:00.718: DEBUG/NFC JNI(278): > AID: 0102030405060708090000
02-18 13:25:00.722: DEBUG/NfcService(278): Card Emulation message
02-18 13:25:00.722: DEBUG/NfcService(278): Broadcasting com.android.nfc_extras.action.AID_SELECTED

I,ve tried to handle theese intents with no success;

Is there any way to communicate with reader, without modyfing firmware?

Or may be i can get access to secure element from native code (C) ?

The reader i use supports NFCA, NFCB and RFID technologies.

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1 Answer

up vote 2 down vote accepted

Card emulation (EDIT: via the secure element) is NOT supported in Android. You could try connecting to the reader peer to peer, or (depending on how much control you have over the reader) you may be able to have the reader act as a tag, and send information back and forth to the phone.

The secure element has been made off limits to Android developers. This was partially due to security reasons, and partially because of issues arising from the question of who gets to access the memory on the tag.

BlackBerry does support card emulation though.

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The above answer is insofar correct that it refers to Google Android devices with NFC. Currently, that means the Nexus S, the Nexus S 4G and the Galaxy Nexus. Any device manufacturer could decide to bring out an Android NFC device with a publicly accessible API for the secure element. Besides that, technically, access to the secure element and supporting card emulation are 2 different things. –  NFC guy Feb 20 '12 at 21:04
Good point, I edited my post to reflect this. –  Ben Ward Feb 20 '12 at 22:19
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