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I'm really frustrated with a Nexus S turning off while in my pocket. I'm wondering if it has something to do with the pin positions, or these 2 strange back pins and contacts on the cover that don't seem to do anything:

what are these pins for?

I guess those tell the phone "the back cover is on", which must mean something to the phone. When I put a piece of paper between those pins and the back cover, the phone at least doesn't seem to do the (literal 5 minute) "flash disk check" when the phone comes on.

Is blocking these pins from contacting a bad thing? Will it help to stop the phone from turning off in my pocket?

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GPS antenna, maybe? – Matthew Read♦ Jun 15 '12 at 17:47
NFC, see my answer :) – jlehenbauer Jun 15 '12 at 18:00
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@jlehenbauer I was going to say that first and then I questioned whether the N1 had NFC. Should have searched :P – Matthew Read♦ Jun 15 '12 at 19:17
@MatthewRead haha I guess good thing I paid more attention to the picture, I guessed I assumed he was talking about an S from the picture, as I've seen the inside a million times now (my brother has the Nexus S and the battery falls out all the time). Ignorace wins, in this case! But thanks to eldarerathis for the edits too – jlehenbauer Jun 15 '12 at 19:21

1 Answer

up vote 10 down vote accepted

This is for the NFC functionality. Those contacts are used to transmit the info to and from the receiver/transmitter on the back cover (seen below outlined in green, though you probably guessed it :) ). They have to put it on the back cover because NFC only works for usually no more than a few centimetres, and they need a way to feed the information back to the phone system itself.

It is discussed more in this post on another Android forum.

NFC transmitter

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iFixit's teardown also confirms this, as they discuss removing the NFC module from the back cover. – eldarerathis♦ Jun 15 '12 at 18:03
The NFC sticker is simply a flat coil acting as an antenna. Its size is a given. It's stuck onto the inner side of the back cover so nothing is in the way to interfere transmissions between the antenna and an NFC device hold tight to the back (the cover's plastic doesn't count). – ce4 Jun 15 '12 at 20:14

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