Felicity Card, or FeliCa, an RFID smart card system, is the NFC standard in Japan, Hong Kong and other markets in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region. It has been expanding in adoption in that region and is well used among transit, retail, and loyalty services. Adding support for FeliCa in Android devices destined for that region improves their usefulness.
Implementation
HCE FeliCa requires NFC hardware that supports the NFC-F (JIS 6319-4) standard.
Host Card Emulation (HCE) of FeliCa is essentially a parallel implementation to the existing HCE implementation on Android; it creates new classes for FeliCa where it makes sense and merges with the existing HCE implementation where possible.
The following Android components are included in the Android Open Source Project (AOSP):
- Framework classes
- Public HostNfcFService (convenience service class)
- @hide NfcFServiceInfo
- Modifications to core NFC framework
As with most Android platform features, manufacturers write the drivers to make the hardware work with the API.
Validation
Use the Android Compatibility
Test Suite to ensure this feature works as intended. CTS Verifier
(NfcTestActivity) tests this implementation for devices reporting the
android.hardware.nfc.hcef feature constant.