On my phone when the alarm goes off, the NFC unlock screen comes up. However, in this state the phone's NFC doesn't seem to be enabled. Not sure if this is an issue with the NFC unlock app or if it's a firmware problem (VZW note 3).

While I hate the idea of having to hack around bugs in external software packages or hardware, it would be nice if there was something that can be done about this. It's really not fun to have to use the google account unlock in a half awake stupor. Maybe some exception a user can make for certain packages to allow them to get through while the phone is still locked, or something?

Got my replacement ring today. Seems to work so far. I need to get used to it again. I have a note 3 so it's quite tricky but I can get to where it's not a big deal.

Got an email back, replacement ring is on it's way here.

Yeah, when I had my ring, it was very difficult on the note 3 for the first day or 2. Basically didn't work at all. Once I got used to it though it was alright. Usually only took a couple seconds to get it to unlock with an occasional failed read. I imagine all phones will have some amount of that which sadly I guess for a lot of people isn't acceptable. Things must work as they do in the movies where you just tap it and it immediately knows your intent and works. :p Anything RF/inductive will never be that way...

The way I used my ring is that I had it on the ring finger of my right hand and I'd hold the phone with my right hand and just stretch my palm across the back where the ring would be pretty much around where the fake stitching is maybe 1/2 to 3/4 from the top. It's a big phone but I have small hands -- my ring finger is a size 7 -- so nobody should have any problems.

The reality is that the tradeoff for security and the overall small design is that it'll take a bit of learning to use. Security will always have a convenience tradeoff, and this one's pretty slight when it comes to such things.

Alright, sent the ring out via USPS today. Let's see how this goes.

I don't quite know what you mean unless your implying I'm not the right sort of person to be using the ring?

Anyway, I found out my tablet (first gen nexus 7) can read NFC, and I tried looking for any sort of shadow of a response from it from either side of the ring and nothing, same with my phone. However the two devices immediately detected each other when brought together so their individual NFC functionality does seem to work, so I guess I'll follow the return prodecure and see how it goes...

Upon further investigation, my phone's NFC may have died. Both sides of the ring won't read and my enhanced ID which has been reported to be NFC compatible also fails to read. I should try to look for other NFC tags to try to read to see what's going on. Unfortuntaely, I have no other NFC devices to try to use to try for reading.

I checked out nodebb using the nodebb community forums and personally I wasn't too crazy about it. All the forums were a weird scattered mess and the thread listings were just that usual kind of modern flat, featureless look that everything's using nowadays... all that's fine I suppose since I imagine you can just theme it and make it look a bit more traditional and less scattered.

The bigger issue is that pressing back in my browser didn't seem to work and I don't know if that's a bug or an intentional feature or not but I could see that being really annoying if I can't simply jump back to the forums list with the back button. This got annoying to the point that I really didn't mess with it much further then browsing around a bit. Ther emight be some other annoyances, I don't know.

I don't really know how either forum software is from the maintenance/administration end of things so if there are any major benefits to nodebb for that then I guess that part's important. I'd just hope it's more than something to make it look more "modern" or whatever. Where modern seems to go a bit more form over function and more about trying to look flashy with transitions and dynamic this or that where it's not really necessary.

I think the community would like to hear about the benefits of moving to nodebb over continuing with phpbb so they can have some input. I imagine there haven't been any real responses to this thread since people simply don't even know what to compare.

So, any third party batteries with better performing antennas with the NFC ring?

I posted this picture in another thread, but just so it's in the right category...

Verizon (Quallcomm Snapdragon) Samsung Galaxy Note 3 (N900V), regular ring size 7.

It's pretty quirky and can be difficult and may fail to read once or twice occasionally but once you get used to it it's pretty easy and reliable for me.