TECHNOLOGY
I Can’t Decide Whether NFC Tags Are Wonderful or Useless — Can You?
What do you think?
When I first learned that my iPhone XR supported reading and writing NFC (Near Field Communication) tags, I was excited. What a wonderful technology! I immediately ordered a pack of writable NFC stickers and started playing with them.
NFC *read* capability was technically available as early as iPhone 6, but the only app allowed to use it was Apple Pay. IOS 11 opened up read for apps on iPhone 7, but writing didn’t come until 2019 with IOS 13. The iPhone XS, XS Max and XR series finally let you read tags without a third party app. Writing from the iPhone itself came with IOS 14.
Android has had NFC ability much longer, but I’m an Apple Sheeple so I do not care.
Great. I have some tags, I have the ability to write to them with my iPhone 11. What now?
What’s possible?
Well, anything, but my realistic options are far more limited. First, the “Near” part of NFC is about 1/4 of an inch with the tags I bought. This isn’t a walk-by thing at all. Also, the NFC reader in your phone is at the very top, so that’s the part that has to come near the tag. It’s a “line up the top of your phone very close to the tag” thing.
