So can the NFC One Ring unlock an Android phone?

The short answer is yes.

Last summer at Kickstarter, the fundraising for NFC-rings began (the post on Habré Giktimes ). The creators did not promise anything super-innovative, but putting together well-known, but not popular things into something convenient and familiar is also a good idea. It is not surprising that the collection, although not very noticeable, was completed successfully. For a whole year, the guys wrote letters about their difficulties, about battles and victories, about falls and ups.


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As a result, the long-awaited letter, a couple of weeks of waiting, refined by the Post of Russia and the lack of tracking, and here is the coveted envelope in my hands.

Traditionally, I would like to admit that lately the Russian Post delivers parcels quite quickly, but it does not deliver mental anguish.

So, a small dense postal envelope with a reverse of natural pimples and an elongated black box inside.



I recapture the Collection offer:

Normal NFC Ring

Alpha ring: the same as usual, only twice as wide.
Stealth Bomber: the first rule of the owner of such a ring is not to talk about this ring.

What came to me in the end:
- two ordinary rings, each with two color inserts covering the nfc-tag: blue + rainbow and black + black.
- three nfc tags to create your own rings on a 3D printer ( video tutorial , samples on Tinkercad )
- a set of stickers for the phone to indicate the place where to put the ring.
- defective wide ring as a gift (marriage concerns the appearance - small chips and dull stains. The ring itself works)
- chain
- quick start guide



Where is the normal alpha ring? Instead, with an apology sent a promotional code for their store. Alpha rings resisted for a long time, so the management decided to send out orders without them, so as not to increase the length of time. Now these rings can be ordered in their store.

And what about the Stealth Bomber Edition? One of the usual rings had to be made of ferrous metal (this is exactly the stealth edition) or at least with the insertion of fashionable scaly-carbon paint, but at that moment when polls about colors and sizes were sent, such options were turned off. Now such rings exist only in the form of a render, the problems in manufacturing continue to this day. The carbon promise is about to win, and there is almost no news about the covert version (but still there is).



So, having admired and after trying to hear about delight, I put my first tick "received" on the kickstarter and started a close inspection.

First of all, we need a phone with NFC and the official application installed on it, Android and WinPhone 8 are supported. But there are nuances - Nexus, most likely, will see a ringlet, but it will be powerless to do something ( comment line ). Samsung devices successfully read only Alpha rings.
Blackberry, Android and Raspberry Pi can also work with rings using foreign applications or modules.

I was lucky - on HTC One M8 the official application works, but periodically crashes after recording :)

According to the possibilities, without any special surprises - yes, it may contain a link or text, shows the text while reading, or is immediately sent by reference. Both the recording and the reading in the application itself are quite convenient - the color scheme with nfc-sensitive places on the phone unfolds on the screen. My phone rings can be seen directly from the camera, opposite the flash, so that the stickers were not useful.



As promised, in the ring you can write two tags on both sides. It is assumed that one tag will be public - a facebook or github profile, for example, or a bitcoin key (no, seriously, it says so!), And the second one is Read-only with the ability to unlock the phone or open the door at home.



Accordingly, the ring should be worn with the public side up, and the second should be hidden. So it would be nice to order color inserts from two sides of a different color, not black and black.

Let's now look at the ringlets using some other application to learn more about their lineage (for example, NFC Tools ).



NFC Tools allow you to do several more things than the official app. But there is one exclusive only from the creators and only for Android. Drum roll - a ring can unlock the phone. In the comments on Habré and in questions on the kicksterter there was a lot of information, which briefly boiled down to “on a non-rooted device — impossible”. What really?

Two labels on the ring are initially rewritable. You need to choose which side will be a dark secret, write magic spells on it and make Read-only. All operations are performed with the help of an additional official application and either on the guide within the application, or with an eye to the instructions . In general, nothing complicated - add a ringlet, set up a lockscreen display and add a pin code in case the ring or NFC mode is unavailable on the phone.



What it looks like: I left my normal unlock enabled. Locked the phone, began to unlock. At first, the standard lockscreen appeared, I entered my password, then the second lockscreen appeared from the NFC Ring asking for the ring to be unlocked. Not a problem, we make a magical pass with a ring - it all worked, hurray!

But we will not stop on this? I decided to disable the regular unlock and rely only on the ring. The application showed me a lot of caps and terrible curses, I agreed with its conditions and once again checked that I turned off the standard protection. Blocked the phone, started unlocking - but oh-oh-oh, why is it what is it like this!



I had to unlock the pin code. In fact, there is a third way to unlock - enter the password to the main google-account of the phone. But in the case of two-factor authentication, this again does not work.

To turn such adventures - unlocking only with a ring without standard lockscreen - when using two-factor authentication, you must first prepare and add a specially generated password to the application .

NFC-Lockscreen itself has a lot of settings, the ability to set wallpaper - and the ability to get an unlocked phone after installing unsuccessful wallpapers on an unsuccessful phone and crashing the application in result.



And suddenly, a fantastic story about - well, a minor vulnerability, perhaps? After some time, the thought occurred to me to give this application a second chance. I successfully set everything up, double-checked and absolutely calm, having played enough, disconnected NFC in the phone.

Turning the phone on before leaving the house was a bit of a surprise. From the three options for unlocking the ring is not available to me, the password of the main google-account of the phone due to two-factor authorization will not help anything again, and the pin code ... Yes. I forgot my PIN.

During intense thinking about what kind of information from the phone must be saved, and weighing the likelihood of recalling the pin-code, my hands nervously turned the device and decided to use the good old “switch-and-turn on” method. Waiting, loading - and happiness, joy, no blocking! I rushed into the settings and turned on the ill-fated NFC a second before the phone was locked. And successfully unlocked his ring.

Information about this incident - a few seconds without blocking after a reboot, and you can reboot right from the screen of Lockscreen - passed on to the author. He considered it insignificant and was probably right. But the thought of using the ring seriously to unlock doesn't occur to me anymore. In addition, with regard to energy consumption, a miracle did not happen. My HTC lasts about a day with constantly working bluetooth for pebble. After turning on NFC, the lifetime has been reduced to 5 hours.

Probably, you can use the ring as a replacement for something like a subway ticket, driving to study or work? But, for example, this is what my penetration looks like.



The flowers in the screenshot close the numbers and, as it were, tell us that we have our own real security service, which does not allow us to transfer the penetration to third-party objects.

As a result, the most appropriate use for the ring seems to me to be the business card — the usual link to the github / linkedin profile or a real contact card (the latter is well described in the ABBYY material ).

So what do we have in the end? Beautiful and neat ring, operation of fashionable nfc-technology. Two tags - space for play.
Is it worth it? As a Becker, I paid for 3 separate tags, 3 ready-made rings and a promo code for another 50 British pounds a year ago. Now for each ask for 30 pounds. On well-known sites, you can buy a decent looking nfc ring from $ 15 - or for a couple of dollars the tag itself. Yes, of course, in this case, you can lose the amazing applications (I do not have other rewritable labels for verification - if they confirm or deny in the comments, I will add to the post). But the unlock application is inconvenient, even if NFC is always turned on, and the main application, to be honest, is easily replaced with any other.

PS If there are suggestions, what functions of rings or applications should be considered in more detail - write in the comments, check and add to the post.