RIM’s BlackBerry devices once commanded a drug-like influence over its adopters, mostly thanks to its once ultra-geeky feel. BlackBerry 7 is starting to bring some of that sexy back, with a few updates here and there that actually sound like something we may want to use again. With the announcement of the addition of Iris ID biometric NFC credentials, RIM has gained some serious cool points.
Iris ID biometric NFC credentials say you? If that’s not a complicated mouthful of technical jargon, I don’t know what it. Basically, Iris—a now-independent company that spun off of LG in the US—makes iris scanners for companies to use for various things, such as for time cards and door locks. Sometimes it’s an actual iris scanner at each checkpoint, but unfortunately this does not mean that your BlackBerry 9900/9930 or BlackBerry Curve 9350/9360 will suddenly double as a 007 eye scanner.
What it does mean is that if your employer uses Iris ID’s iCAM7000, you can store your biometric signature—read: ultra-detailed picture of your eyeballs—as a NFC tag in your NFC-enabled BlackBerry 7 device. You can then use your BlackBerry as you would a swipe-able credential card, making for one less thing to carry around. Best of all, this technology will likely cost you very little, though it may cost your employer a pretty penny—but we’re probably all ok with that. Hit the jump for the full press release.
Near field communication (NFC) is the buzzword of the day, and any high-end smartphone without is deemed to be less than adequate. But adoption rates in the lower three-fourths of the smartphone realm have been much slower. Acer is working to fix that, and has promised to include NFC in all of its smartphones from now on.
