What and Why is a S Beam.

What? Can u send a picture from a mobile to  mobile just by holding them back to back.No authentication like blue tooth. oh come on, how?

Its possible in the phones having NFC(Near field communication). So, what NFC, a new story? Lets get clear what is a NFC,

Near field communication, is a standard for very short-range radio transmission. How short are we talking about? A pair of NFC transmitters can communicate at a maximum of just a few centimetres. that's what we have in our latest mobile phones.

Concept behind is inductive coupling. Here is a super example from HowStuffWorks, take 2 copper wires. Pass current to one copper wire, connect the another copper wire to voltmeter(instrument to measure voltage travelling in circuit). When electrons flows in a conductor, it produces magnetic field. When you move the first wire near the second wire, magnetic field from first wire will pass to the second and the second wire will also produces a magnetic field.

This happens with our RFID tags. Our RFID tags will have a circuit which stores a KB data. RFID reader will have a powered circuit which produces magnetic filed. When we take our Tag closer, will get induced by the magnetic field from RFID reader. RFID tag will also generates magnetic field back, the reader reads the magnetic field produced by the reader and translates the data for us. This happens so fast, we experience it daily.

What's happening in NFC?

 It's possible to incorporate an NFC tag inside a poster. So, if you see an ad for something that interests you, you can hold up your smart phone with an NFC chip up to it and receive more information. How does it happened?

The NFC Chip in the poster is just like a RFID tag. Your phone will have a circuit to produce magnetic field. Once phone nears the poster, magnetic field flown on the poster and produces a different magnetic field back. The reader in your phone, reads the magnetic filed (i.e) data from the poster.

ho you feel great. But, have you forgot about S Beam?

Before reading S Beam, we have a pending one. Types of NFC.

There are 2 types of NFC,

1. Passive NFC
2. Active NFC.

Passive NFC -  A circuit card  that you must place near a reader to activate, which is not powered. E.g: NFC Chips on posters. A powered reader should be used to read data from the poster.

Active NFC - Here both the reader and chip will be powered. Lets have 2 devices A & B. A want to read from B. When A nears to B, magnetic field from A activates B. The B generated its own magnetic field, A reads it. This is what happening in S Beam. S Beam:S beam is the samsung extension of  Android Beam (a feature of the Android mobile operating system to allow data to be transferred via near field communication). 

S Beam uses Active Near field communication mode, which we discussed earlier.

An active NFC can only communicate with one target device at a time -- you can't broadcast a message to multiple devices over NFC. The active device will send information to the target and will only accept a response from that target. Other NFC devices will ignore the communication.

Which is best?

In terms of Speed: Blue tooth is good, since its transfer speed is 2.1mbps but NFC is 424kbps.Power consumption: NFC Consumes less power than blue tooth.Coverage: Blue tooth covers a large area than NFC.NFC is easy to use, no need to pair device like a blue tooth connection.

Anyway NFC is highly useful for its own application, which is going to future by Go Mobile, like google wallet.

AMOLED & LED - A Dive in

My friends got thier new mobiles this week, a Samsung NOTE 2, a Samsung S 3. 

The attractive one of both is its display. A word AMOLED fell in my ears. What ? AMOLED ?

I remember LED, a light emitting diode. But AMOLED, is a type of LED?

Yes, AMOLED is a type of LED. It is an Active-Matrix Organic LED.

LED, to understand it you should remember you physical terms from your school days. Like cathode, anode, p-type, n-type semiconductor. These are not engineering terms, but simple school physical terms.

A LED, as it name implies its a DIODE.A diode is the simplest sort of semiconductor device. 

Broadly speaking, a semiconductor is a material with a varying ability to conduct electrical current. We are not going more than that to avoid confusion.

A LED has 2 parts, a P-Type semiconductor (positively charged HOLES) and a N-Type Semiconductor (Negatively charged ELECTRONS).

You guys remember a LED have 2 pins, a long and a short one and we use a AA(battery we use for wall clock) to make a LED glow. Positive side should be connected to long one and respective other. On the reverse LED will not glow.

The logic simple, when battery is connected. the electrons will be attracted towards holes, once they combines(electrons + holes) in the junction electrons will release energy in the form of PHOTONS (which is a light energy).

Light energy may be visible/invisible depending upon  the semiconductor we use. E.g TV Remote - An infrared LED which generates invisible photons. Other colour LED are visible to human eye.

OLED
Organic light emitting diode. OLED's are invented for making flexible and thin displays. With LED we cannot make a flexible because of its crystalline in nature. As we discussed earlier a LED P & N type semiconductors are used between anode & cathode.

But, OLED has a different construction process. Instead of P&N semiconductors, organic polymers layers are used. 2 or 3 layers of polymers will be used.

1st layer will be a conductive layer, connected with anode to transport holes (+vely charged).

2nd layer is an emmisive layer, connected with cathode to transport electrons (-vely charged).

When electrons combines with holes, light will be generated.




AMOLED
We are not going to talk about construction anymore. AMOLED stands for Active-matrix OLED. 

Active-matrix technique deals with addressing and arrangement of OLED's in a display.
In a single AMOLED, different colour layers forms a matrix. The different colour layers, say RED, BLUE, GREEN will be in single OLED. Respective colours are chosen at display time.


Why AMOLED not LCD ?

AMOLED has faster refresh time,
Consumes less power,
Flexible,
Light weight.

The above are significant things AMOLED has when compared to LCD. That's how flexible displays are possible now.

Thanks for the amazing technology.

Related interesting topics,

1. Pentile matrix, a sub pixel technique used in AMOLED screens.

I did not know about it. But, i am watching it daily.

Stepping into my house i was searching for TV remote, it has became an important part of our cycle. My favourite channels are Star Movies, HBO, Ten sports and many. How many of us know

  where they originated?
  Who is broad casting it?
  How famous they are?
  Significantly what the channel name means?

I have tried to find something. I am presenting you my findings.

You know STAR TV. They are the 2nd largest media group standing after The Walt Disney Company  and 3rd in terms of entertainment.

STAR - Satellite Television Asian Region.

In earlier 2009 group has been divided into STAR India, STAR Greater China, STAR Select and Fox International Channels Asia

STAR India is what we are enjoying now. STAR India's portfolio includes 33 channels in eight languages to more than 400 million people every week across India and more than 100 countries across the globe

Nat Geo, ESPN are all part of this group.

Broad casted by Turner broadcasting company a subsidiary of time Warner(the second largest in term of entertainment next to Walt Disney).
POGO is broad casted in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.







POGO is a toy, kids use to jump and play.







MTV - Music Television an American cable television network, which broadcasts music and reality shows targeting adults and music lovers.