Hello,
I am starting to develop an App that pretends to exchange information between different mobile phones using NFC technology. So far, the communication has only been possible between some Android phones (not all), but not at all with Iphones.
I have read that Iphone now supports reading and writing NFC tags, however, I have not found the way to communicate the different phones.
I am trying to
Android (write) — Android (Read)
Android (write) — Iphone (Read)
Iphone (write) — Iphone (Read)
Iphone (write) — Android (Read)
Do you guys have any recommendations or share some help?
Hello, the request is a popular one and we’ve gotten all of the cases you outlined to work. The first two (A->A and A->iPh) are straight forward if you follow public documentation but the last two (iPh->iPh and iPh->A) require the involvement of the Apple Wallet application. The Apple Wallet is the only app on the iPhone that can operate the NFC controller in Card Emulation mode (or “write” as you describe it). In order to put content into Apple Wallet, you need an NFC certificate from Apple. You can use a service like PassNinja or request one here.
Reading CE content in Apple Wallet can be tricky. First, the protocols it supports –VAS and MIFARE– are proprietary and protected under NDA. Second, it expects an auto-select command that requires firmware changes to your reader (something not possible on unrooted phones). As shown in the videos below, we’ve overcome these issues.
Here we manually select the target pass in the Apple Wallet before scanning it with another iPhone. The app calls out to a web service for the proprietary protocol so requires online connectivity.
Here we use an external reader with the auto-select firmware support, implementing the entire experience with best UX:
I hope this was helpful. Glad to answer further questions on the topic.
