Near Field Communication (NFC) is a technology that uses radio waves to transmit data over a short distance. It is he who makes it possible to pay by approximation, for example, which is increasingly becoming recurrent on smartphones. Check now to know if your cell phone has NFC.
As much as the feature is on the rise at the moment, whether for use in payments, pairing accessories or facilitating access to wireless networks without typing the password, the technology is not so new.
NFC was co-invented in 2002 by Philips and Sony, but rumors indicate that RFID, the technology used in hotel badges and keys and on which NFC uses the base, was created during World War II – in a very basic way, of course. – to identify allied planes.
In 2003, the technology was recognized by the ISO/IEC 18092 standard. In 2004, the NFC Forum was created, an organization that brings together several companies interested in the development and applications of NFC, Apple, Sony, Google and Qualm, for example .
Today, the technology is used in boarding passes, credit cards, ATMs and, most notably, smartphones. The feature can be found in the vast majority of devices on the market, but some may not yet have the technology.
Due to the enormous amount of devices for sale, it would be very difficult to specify which phones have the technology and which do not. Check below to find out if your phone has NFC or not.
How to know if your Apple cell phone has NFC?
In the case of Apple cell phones, the task is much simpler. Starting with iPhone 6, all devices have NFC technology, although there are some differences.
On the iPhone 6, the first to receive the technology, the NFC works in a closed way, working only with Apple Pay. This is one of the reasons why the NFC icon did not appear in the model's Control Center after iOS 14.
In iPhones 7 to X, the NFC technology is more comprehensive and can, for example, read tags. These models, which received the icon in the Control Center, can perform active reading. This means that the user necessarily has to tell the device that he wants to look for an NFC tag.
From iPhone X onwards, it is not necessary to activate NFC, as they rely on passive reading. This means that the user does not need to do anything for the device to interact with the technology, just get close to them. These devices have not received the NFC icon in Control Center.
How to know if your Android phone has NFC?
Due to the different brands and models of Android devices, it is impossible to specify in a simple way which devices do or do not have the technology. And, if they do, what is their level of interactivity. Generally, top-of-the-line models have been using the technology since 2017. The first to implement the technology was the Samsung Nexus S, in 2010.
Often, when looking at the box or its specifications, we may not find the information. There are still cases where the region variation may or may not bring the NFC chip to certain countries. Therefore, there are some other ways to find out whether the smartphone has the technology or not.
The first is to look for the NFC enable and disable icon in the Android quick settings panel by dragging the status bar from top to bottom.
Another way is to look for NFC in the device settings. It is usually located in the Connections area. It is also possible to use the locator, looking for “NFC”.
