Re:Remember QR Codes? They’re More Powerful Than You Think
by iforgotpassword on Friday November 01, 2019 @06:24AM
(#21417448)
Also, QR codes are much easier to make. You just print them on any cheap printer. You can display them on a screen. They are platform and medium independent. I think this is underrated.
Range, most likley. You have to be pretty much on top of one another for NFC to work reliably. However, Japan made NFC work pretty well, IIRC.
By constrast, you can scan a QR code with your camera from across the room if the QR code is big enough.
The real question is why not use BLE? And I suspect the answer was that BLE wasn't on feature phones in China when all this stuff was rolling out.
It may also be that QR codes practically always require you to contact a server somewhere, so China may prefer that over BLE for social control purposes. (For example, I believe that the Hong Kong protesters were doing information exchange over BLE in order to avoid getting shut down by the central authorities.)