Almost everybody carrying around a smartphone has their own set of pictures and videos that they are dying to share with you. We all have those friends that simply have a Wi-Fi only tablet that want to suck up a little of your Wi-Fi. How about a friend that is low on data and wants to connect to your Wi-Fi while at your house. No matter how good the friend is, I hate to give out my ‘password’ for anything, including my Wi-Fi. After all, it may be the same password that I use for my bank account or credit card, and even though my friend may not know that, it is just not a good idea to share passwords. Now, Google’s Android L now has a simple solution for them gaining access to your Wi-Fi…a NFC tag.
Storing your Wi-Fi information on a NFC tag was possible before Android L, but requires quite a bit of work. With Android L, there is actually an option to directly set up the NFC tag in the Wi-Fi settings menu, as shown below. Just select ‘Write to NFC tag’ option, next you will be asked to type in your Wi-Fi password, and then you are done! Next time someone is at your house and wants to sign-in to your Wi-Fi, all they have to do is ‘tap the tag’ to join in using your network…this is all providing that your friend has a NFC capable device. You cannot get it much easier than that, and this is just another way that Google’s new Android L makes things easier.
What is also nice about most smartphones is that once you do enter the password for a friend if you are not running Android L, is that you can set the device to ‘remember’ that Wi-Fi network for your next visit. I have a couple siblings that live near me, and I have set their Wi-Fi’s up in my Galaxy Note 3 device and each time I visit them my device will immediately recognize their Wi-Fi network and sign me in without me having to asking them for the password again.
Please hook up with us on our Google+ Page and let us know if you use other people’s Wi-Fi networks or if others use yours – how do you handle it…as always, we would love to hear from you.