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i know iphone 4 does not have a NFC chip built in but i am wondering if i can still detect a rfid chip maybe using wifi signal or celluar signal?

一二三
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ｊｉｎ
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2 Answers2

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You don’t really get low-level enough access to the phone’s radios to let you communicate directly with an RFID tag. Your best bet is to look into external hardware, possibly an Arduino or similar talking to your app via the headphone jack.

Noah Witherspoon
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    In any case, RFID chips typically use communication circuitry that runs on different frequencies and with different coding than the iPhone radios support: even assuming you had sufficient low level access to the radios they still speak enough of a different language that you wouldn't be able to get any communication going. – Femi Jul 11 '11 at 16:59
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Only the iPhone 6 has the required NFC controller to communicate with NFC tags. At this time, it's unclear what SDK might be available to developers:

Reading NFC Tags with iPhone 6 / iOS 8

RFID or NFC chips cannot be detected by WiFi or cellular. This is not possible due to different technology they use. There are external NFC readers available for the iPhone.

Check e.g. here: http://www.icarte.ca/

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STeN
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  • o thx alot bro...you know what is the approximate range of those things? i mean in stores they got those giant magnetic readers at the entrance that has pretti good range for detection – ｊｉｎ Jul 13 '11 at 04:38
  • Those magnetic readers are using different RFID technology, so they do not interfere with the NFC at all. The NFC is proximity technology with about 10 cm communication distance... – STeN Jul 13 '11 at 06:23
  • o i see..my original idea was to modulate some wireless waveform using the iphone hardware and try to detect a a rfid tag. Seemed like this is not possible with the current iphone hardware. Can you think of any technology that allows remote sensing of any sort? – ｊｉｎ Jul 15 '11 at 17:03
  • In light of today's iPhone 6 announcements, this could be updated. – BergQuester Sep 09 '14 at 23:19