Regarding the second question. The advantage about having a dedicated secure element is that you can have your proof of concept running and still use a SIM card to make calls.
May be you can get...

Before starting coding and if you're not very familiar with NFC I suggest you start reading documentation. There are loads of nice articles on the web explaining how NFC works.

But to answer your...

When you say connect you have the choice between three strategies:
- The phone is in "card emulation mode" and the reader is in "reader mode". Then the reader talks to the phone's internal secure...

Don't know if it's of any help but you still have the Runtime.getRuntime().freeMemory() and Runtime.getRuntime().totalMemory() to monitor memory usage

Cheers

It looks like it's not your fault. May be you can try a little later to see if the server answers.

I remember following that tutorial and it worked fine.

Looking at other posts people had...

Well if, like you said, the Connector.open() method doesn't return then I have no clue of what might be the problem.

If I remember well the antenna is on the top part of the phone when it's open, try aiming at that part.
Try reading a normal tag to make sure the handsets' NFC work properly.
Eventually consider...

I just checked, no particular permission is required for this to work.
I had this example working on two 6212 and it worked fine as far as I remember.
Are the two applications properly launched on...

You can use Runtime.getRuntime().freeMemory() and Runtime.getRuntime().totalMemory() to help you see what's wrong

Is the NFC turned on in the phone's settings ?
Did you put the right permissions in the JAD file ?

I guess it depends on what you want to do with your cellphone and your toaster.
A NFC device in Reader/Writer mode is "active" and talks with a "passive" device (ie a tag, a contactless smart card...