iOs et NFC: latest news from a NFC API

Recently, an iOS developer performed tests with his jailbroken iPhone and, in the wake, Apple released an NFC API for all developers.
Will the new API unveiled by Apple be released in September?
In the meantime, here is a brief summary of what we have observed.

The interaction jailbreaker / Apple

On May 19, 2017, Elias Limneos, iOs developer, published a video in which he shows how to identify different types of tags with his iPhone.
Its application runs on a jalibreaked iPhone with iOS 10 with an iPhone 6s.

The following June 4, he published a new video in which he presents an application capable of writing on tags.

On June 5, WWDC17 was held, Apple's annual event is used to announce new hardware, new APIs and versions of iOS or Mac OS. On that day, Apple informed of the availability of an API to read NDEF records. It is available on iOs 11, in beta version, and requires an iPhone 7 at least.

On June 17, Elias Limneos wrote an article in which he presented his application, able to address directly to the driver of the NFC chip, without using API, and to run in card emulation mode.

Its application will be available charged on Cydia, the store of people who have a jailbroken phone.

The Apple Official

To use NFC APIs, Apple indicates that it is needed to:

• Use the next version of Xcode, version 9 (beta version), which means that you can submit an application to the Apple Store.
• And to use iOs 11 (also in beta version).

Jameson Quave has developed a demo application (and a tutorial) with the official API of Apple on an iPhone that uses the beta version of iOS. Read more here.

To date, Apple's official API allows only to read, which is a still limited approach to NFC. The possibilities are reduced when starting a session with the reader and processing (reading) NDEF messages. See the article here.

After that ?

Learn about Core NFC here!

Published on 6/26/2017