Starting with the iPhone 6, Apple is equipping its smartphones with NFC. This contactless data technology was previously used by Apple solely to power the Apple Pay payment system. Developers of third-party applications have been denied access to NFC on the iPhone. A lot will change with the release of iOS 13. Our iPhones will be able to work in new ways.
Already, iPhones with iOS 11 and higher support Core NFC - this technology allows a smartphone to read information transmitted by an NFC tag and display it on the screen in front of the user's eyes. For example, you can read information from such a tag in a grocery store, obtaining complete data on the composition of the product, its history, origin and price. Core NFC, however, only works with iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus and newer models.
But iOS 13 does promise us an NFC revolution. Only recently it became known that with the release of the update, iPhones will be able to read RFID chips in biometric passports and other documents. As a result, many applications for digitizing documents will appear in the App Store, which were previously only available to users of Android devices due to the lack of restrictions on the use of NFC.
But that's not all. The developers say that in iOS 13 Apple will allow reading NFC tags based on ISO 7816, FeliCa and MiFare standards. In simple words, this turns the iPhone into a real electronic key: it will be possible to unlock NFC-based digital locks, go through turnstiles, pay for travel on buses or metro, using a smartphone not as a means of payment, but as a transport card.