Certainly, the addition of NFC functionality into Android has been behind a plethora of useful features in recent years, from mobile payments to beaming files between devices. Unfortunately, for some users who updated their Nexus devices to KitKat, the NFC service which powers all these cool features dies repeatedly, and renders any functions tied to it useless. The good news is, Google has apparently found the root cause of the problem and has marked it to be fixed in a future release.

Symptoms

Some users are reporting that, with NFC turned on, trying to make a connection to another device or turning the screen off results in Android's NFC service force closing. This has been confirmed to affect all Nexus devices which have an official KitKat build:

Nexus 4

Nexus 5

Nexus 7 (2012 and 2013, both WiFi and Cellular)

Nexus 10

It has also been confirmed on the following builds:

4.4/KRT16S

4.4.1/KOT49E

4.4.2/KOT49H

Workaround (Kind Of)

Though there is no good permanent workaround, there is one that will at least allow you to beam something if need-be. Users have reported success by toggling airplane mode on the affected device. This will allow one connection before the NFC service will start its endless crash loop again.

Closing

Thankfully, this isn't a bug that seems to be affecting a lot of people. That said, affected users really have no other option at this stage but to wait for Google to fix it. The best case scenario would be that the issue turns out to be a quick fix for someone on the Android team and gets out in the next official Nexus OTA.

Thanks, Denham!