We’re getting very puzzled with Google’s Android version lately. People have found that Honeycomb might work with smartphones, and Android 2.4 with the same Gingerbread codename is coming as early as April, but now Google is still announcing the new 2.3.3 build, an extension to the still-new Gingerbread 2.3 build. So what’s so special about this build that needs Google to announce?

Apparently 2.3.3 brings developer access to the platforms newfound NFC capabilities as first seen on the Nexus S. Yes, this has been seen as coming soon but I’d never expect it to be this fast. When Google announced the Nexus S with NFC and Gingerbread 2.3, we saw the introduction of the NFC on smartphone in a big way, but there’s no way for you to alter the NFC chip command, as well as to program the Google Place NFC. Now you can.

Well, there’s a new NFC read / write API that Google alleges will let you access pretty much any NFC tag on the market today, better control over what happens when a tag comes within range of the device, and “limited support” for peer-to-peer NFC communication — something Stanford cobbled together for the Nexus S not long ago. The new build is available now to developers using the Android SDK; no devices have received an update yet, but we’d imagine the Nexus S is queued up to get it before too long.

SOURCE via Google