NFC vs Bluetooth Low Energy
Bluetooth Low Energy beacons broadcast continuously to anything listening, and every one of them contains a battery. An NFC tag has no battery and speaks only to a phone deliberately held against it. The operational cost of those batteries, and the difference between broadcasting and being touched, decide most projects.
The battery is the whole argument
Every BLE beacon contains a cell. One beacon is nothing. Five hundred beacons across a building is an operational programme: someone has to know where they all are, notice when one dies, and physically visit it.
The Bluetooth SIG documents the technology as low energy, and it is, relative to classic Bluetooth. Low is not zero, and zero is what a passive NFC tag consumes.
Projects that founder on this rarely founder in year one. They founder in year three, when nobody remembers the deployment map and a third of the estate has gone quiet.
Broadcasting against being touched
A beacon announces itself to everything in range, continuously, whether anyone wants it to or not. That is exactly right for finding a lost item or noticing when a visitor enters a zone.
It is exactly wrong when the interaction should be deliberate. A beacon cannot tell the difference between someone standing at a display and someone walking past it, and it certainly cannot be used to mean "I choose this one" the way a tap can.
That distinction also shapes the privacy story. A phone reading a tag reveals nothing to anyone, because the tag has no idea it was read and no way to report it. A phone listening for beacons is participating in a system that can, in principle, notice where it is.
What range buys and costs
BLE reaches across a room and further. That is why it is used for asset finding, presence detection and connections that must survive the phone going back in a pocket.
NFC reaches two centimetres, and every one of its advantages descends from that limitation. No pairing, no ambiguity about which object you meant, no possibility of being triggered by something you did not approach.
Choosing between them
If the object cannot host a battery, the question is already answered. A card, a label, a poster, a printed ticket: NFC or nothing.
If the interaction must be deliberate and unambiguous, NFC. If it must happen without the user doing anything, BLE.
If the exchange must continue over time or over distance, BLE, and consider using NFC to start it. Tapping to hand over connection details and then running the session over Bluetooth is a well established pattern that takes the strengths of both.
What almost never works is choosing BLE for a large estate of cheap objects. The unit cost is higher, and the maintenance cost is the one that will actually hurt.
Frequently asked questions
How long does a BLE beacon battery last?
It depends on the broadcast interval, the transmit power and the temperature, and vendor figures assume favourable settings. Treat any single number with suspicion and plan for replacement as a recurring task rather than a rare event.
Can a phone detect a BLE beacon without an app?
Generally not in a useful way. Both platforms restrict background scanning, so a beacon deployment usually requires the user to have installed something, which is a significant adoption obstacle compared with tapping a tag.
Is NFC or BLE better for a digital business card?
NFC, decisively. A card has no room for a battery, and handing one over is exactly the deliberate gesture NFC is built around. BLE would require the card to be an electronic device with a service life.
Can the two be used together?
Yes, and the classic pattern is NFC for selection and Bluetooth for the session. Tapping a speaker to pair it is that pattern, and it removes the ambiguity that makes pairing tedious.