Bare iPhone 6 Logic Board Surfaces, Claimed to Support NFC and 802.11ac Wi-Fi

[Mildredop]

At least you can say you had NFC "first." That's more important than how useful it is to some people.

I'm surprised they haven't made their rounds here yet.

Excellent point very well made.

 

[CFreymarc]

NO, it's the unnecessary scaremongering by the uneducated that has people unnecessarily holding their breath.

Take a read - http://canada.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/contactless-payment-myths-1264.php

While you and I can discern the difference between RFID and NFC, the general consumer public cannot.

To them it is a "thingy radio barcode" as they associate bringing two things close, hearing a beep and a read happens like at supermarket checkout.

There is a lot of PR needed here.

 

[linuxcooldude]

You have to ask your mommy and daddy to take you on a holiday - seems you aren't very worldly.

The least you could have done was run EC Karte through a search engine - would have saved you the embarrassment.

Besides living in Japan for two years and traveling to 28 countries, some more then once, I think I qualify as worldly.

As much as Germany is worried about getting in debt with credit cards as some say, debit cards only take out money you already have.

 

[SactoGuy18]

The reason why the NFC rumors persist on the iPhone 6 comes to two factors:

1. The rumors of a major deal for mobile payments with China UnionPay, which will require NFC mobile payment terminals.

2. Japanese and South Korean cellphone companies want NFC so the iPhone is compatible with the widely-used NFC mobile payment systems in these two countries such as Korea Telecom's Olleh Touch and East Japan Railway Company's Mobile Suica.

 

[jeffe]

At least you can say you had NFC "first." That's more important than how useful it is to some people.

I'm surprised they haven't made their rounds here yet.

Google opened up NFC recently to allow any banks to enable NFC payments directly and it has been endorsed with VISA and MASTERCARD (source)

The London underground just announced it will be allowing Android users to pay with NFC too. (source) More retailers will soon have NFC enabled terminals making NFC much more attractive to everyone. Let's face it, NFC is catching on and Apple really has no choice to add it or be left behind.

I'm just waiting for places like discovercard, citibank, and bank of america to add NFC access to your credit card in their apps too.

 

[EvilQueen]

wowow

a logic board!

Yea....does anyone really care about this?

 

[xotigu]

NFC has a lot of use I guess. And I'm glad Apple planned to include it (if the rumor is true).
It would be better also if Macbook line has it too, like syncing your device and other stuffs.

 

[peterdevries]

It isn't a huge problem if it isn't activated. This can easily be addressed by Apple with Touch ID. Just because one company does so,etching stupid with MFC does not imply that Apple will.

You are looking only at the technical aspect and forget about the trust issue that people are having with contactless payments. As some have pointed out there are some quite large security issues that remain with contactless payments. Although some of these could be solved in a phone where that would not be possible in a debit card (perse) it still doesn't address the basic sentiment that people will have with the payment form.

People are afraid of hackers and skimmers and this fear is in some regions (mainly Europe) a serious impediment to adoption. Apple implementing the technology will not suddenly alleviate all these sentiments and drive widespread adoption of this technology. There needs to be a serious push in building trust by retailers, banks and technology pushers before NFC will become anything near a viable payment option.

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REWE - Germany wide; KaDeWe in Berlin - need more.

I use my credit card all the time in Germany - yeah, small mom and pop stores and restaurants don't take but acceptance is everywhere.

You must spend more time in Spain, than you do in Germany.

This is a meaningless discussion if you don't inject some perspective into it. The fact is that compared to other countries Germany's uptake of both debit and credit card payments is ridiculously low. Although Germany has some of the largest banks on the planet, it has laughably low standards of service. It is a scandal that a customer needs to look for the right ATM or would otherwise be charged up to 4 dollars for a transaction. In addition general Online Banking technology is at the point of sophistication where the Dutch banks were about 5 years ago. What used to be Citibank in Germany (but is now Targus Bank or something) kept winning awards for their online banking experience, which was not even capable of doing international payments or request banking products up to 3 years ago. Functions that have been the standard anywhere else on the planet for almost a decade.

The things I found most disturbing about the lack of service was that I needed to go to the bank to get a printout of my statements, because sending those to my home would incur additional cost (and that bank didn't have any online banking facilities to do it at home 6 years ago!!! - Sparkasse).

So it might seem fine to Germans that are not aware of the service standard in other countries. But to expats and immigrants it is absolutely laughable how banking customers are treated in Germany.

 

[Rafterman]

You are going to notice little to no difference having 802.11ac in your phone. There is nothing you are doing on your phone, that requires the kind of speeds 802.11ac can provide.


NFC has the potential to change your experience on the phone much more than having the capabilities of higher wifi speeds. I think it's great that Apple pushes the wifi standard forward by including these expensive wifi chip into our phones, but ultimately you should be more excited for NFC in my opinion. 802.11ac will be more important to you in the coming years.

Well, no. For instance, downloading an app from the app store, especially a big one, is significantly faster. I have a Time capsule with AC, and a Note 3 (with AC) I have can download 1 GB app in about a minute. The only drawback is range. AC uses 5GHZ, which has less range and wall penetration than 2.4GHZ signals.

 

[diamond.g]

Agreed. I now keep my cards inside a metal mesh inside my wallet. NFC is the last thing I want. Chip and PIN does just fine for me.

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Don't use NFC

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Considering all the security problems with NFC that's the last thing I want near my phone.

Seems like this should create a market for tinfoil (Faraday cage) wallets. Anyone in that business?

The simple thing to do for an iPhone with NFC is only allow it to work when the screen is on. That would prevent random snooping from occurring. This is done with Google Wallet currently. Of course this doesn't help physical cards...

The other thing about having a second reader under the first to snoop, is interesting. I am not sure how the system would respond to multiple payment requests at once.

 

[ghettochris]

Look, if you're not an expert on these issues, you're not adding to the discussion by throwing out uniformed opinion.

(a) The fact that you have slow internet at your house does not change the fact that there are OTHER usage scenarios that can utilize higher bandwidth. One set set of these is public situations (for example conferences, workplaces) where base stations try to connect to every device as fast as possible, and where high internet bandwidth has been arranged.

Seriously, he was like "who needs wifi that can do 40 MB/sec? no internet can do that but google fiber", well there are those with google fiber, and those that want to transfer files between computers on the same network. even slow as hell hard drives work at near 80 MB/sec, not to mention SSD to SSD could utilize more than 10x that bandwidth.

 

[christian_k]

One explanation for the anomaly is a cultural aversion to debt. The German word for debt — as Friedrich Nietzsche noted — is the same as the word for guilt, and Germans are more likely than other nationalities to associate it with a loss of control."

True.

so no, i dont see NFC being adopted by europe's "biggest" economy anytime soon

Do not forget: NFC can be used for other applications as well. My Berlin underground ticket uses NFC, my Samsung S4 Mini can actually read that card. Some time ago I had a contactless card for a car sharing system.
I worked for a company that had NFC cards as keys for the office.

Christian

 

[kdarling]

We've had chip and pin in Canada for many many years, it really is handy. I had no idea it was NFC though

Most of the new cards now are also tap and go (I think Visa calls it PayWave), is this also NFC or something different?

Okay, sorry. I've been so busy I did not have time to reply in detail. Here's the deal:

ALL CONTACTLESS CARDS

Use one of the RFID frequencies (13.56 MHz) and ISO/IEC 14443 as the basic communications protocol. NFC is partly based on, and compatible with this. That's why NFC phones can read and emulate cards.

PAYPASS / PAYWAVE etc (mostly North America)

These contactless payment cards by MC, Visa, etc are early forms of enhanced RFID devices. When activated, they return basically the same information that is on the mag stripes, but along with a one time verification code so the transaction cannot be replayed.

Later, I believe that those companies made the cards also work with EMV terminals, although it's not clear if they're using EMV per se.

These basic types of contactless cards that reply with mag stripe info in the clear, are the ones that you hear about someone scanning from an NFC phone app.

EMV (aka Chip & PIN)

Originally stood for Europay, MasterCard and Visa. The global physical and code standard for secure contact / contactless payment cards and POS terminals. This is what is used around the world, and is now coming to the US in a huge way, due to a liability deadline in 2015.

EMV and NFC

Contactless EMV cards do not reply with magstripe info in the clear, so they are not subject to same kind of wireless security worries as the more basic cards described above. (Of course, if they include a magstripe so they can be used with older POS card readers, you can still use a physical stripe skimmer just like with any credit card.)

Contactless EMV is compatible with NFC equipped smartphones. This means that any chip&pin (EMV) terminal can also work with a smartphone that has an NFC transceiver and EMV application(s).

And THAT means the coming wave of required EMV (chip&pin) terminals in the US will put many Android phones at an advantage unless Apple also includes NFC.