Useful stuff

it would seem we have many more clients using NFC Automation on their iPhones these days and it would seem to be extremely fragile. Linking the automation to the NFC tag seems fine, but when you try to tap a tag it sometimes works and other times it does not. Once it stops working it is difficult to get it working again. We have proved many times that using the tag and iPhone without the automation works fine and looking online there many posts about issues. So be aware of this if you hit issues. An example of a post is here: 

https://www.reddit.com/r/shortcuts/comments/pzgdf3/im_having_a_problem_with_automations_set_to/

Some fixes mentioned are to reboot the phone and also to delete and reinstate the NFC Automation - but will not always fix the problem that seems a little gremlin!

If you use a standard app like NFC Tools and just read the tag you can

As we have posted before the Apple iPhone only supports the use of a URL to automatically read an NFC Tag or Sticker so even if you write a contact record to a Tag (which it does!) then it will not work on iPhones, but will on an Android.  You can get around this by writing a URL to either a .VCF file which can be downloaded or to access a contact portal like linktr.ee. The advatnage of this is that you do not need anything other then a NTAG213 chip which is one of the cheapest vs the more expensive NTAG215 or NTAG216.

There is an app and service called HiHello which we have tested with NFC and our clients are giving us very positive feedback on.  It stores contact info online & writes a URL to access the contact card onto an NFC Tag / Sticker.  Once you access the contact info online you can download as a contact card or decide on verious other actions. 

You do not have to download the app to use the service, but obviously you can download it

One difference between Android and iPhone is that when an NFC tag is tapped that contains a URL it will bring up the URL in your default browser on Android, but with an iPhone you get an extra prompt from Safari asking if you wish to open the URL.  This is not such a nice look, but since IOS 14 as a developer you can create an App Clip which is a small applet and if it is asscoiated with a URL.  The user gets a neat dialogue with a picture and options for next such as open on a browser or open the app.

We have seen clients using this when we test tags we have encoded for them and it really does make such a difference to the user experience.

Worth looking in to if you have your own application on IOS. The developer documentation can be found here: CLICK HERE

Android has a similar capabilty and works via the URL, so it is possible to encode w

NFC Tag / Stickers  - things to know and comparison between iPhone and Android compatibility

Last updated: 8th October 2021

General

We have started this document and will add to it over time so that when you are using the NFC tags you can understand what will and wont work on a tag when you need it to work with the iPhone using IOS or with an Android mobile with NFC Capability.

Compared to Android mobiles, when using NFC the iPhone is very restricted with the data  that it accepts and will process natively without an application. The reality is that the only data an iPhone can handle is a URL and that URL must not have a Description field added.

WIFI

Which NFC Reader / Writer do I need?

ZipNFC only sell the ACS reader writers due to them being the best quality and most reliable reader / writers on the market.  There are also many resources available on the web to help you build applications for these in all languages.  We have 3 types available from stock and below we explain the differences and how they can be used.

We have two that can be used for reading and writing NFC tags (ACR1252U and ACR1255U-J1) and one that can be used for reading the UID of the chip (ACR1281U-C2).

ACR1281U-C2

The ACR1281U-C2 is interesting as a common use of NFC tags / stickers is to purely use the UID that comes with every NFC chip.