Does iPhone Xr and up support ISO 14443 Type B Tags

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Created 4d

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I am unable to get an iPhone Xr (iOS 18) or iPhone 15 to interact with Texas Instruments RF430CL330H NFC tag. This is an ISO 14443B-compliant tag supporting NDEF. It is NFC Tag Type 4.

A Samsung S23 with Android 14 and NFC Tools v8.11 reads and writes NDEF data with this tag as expected. The iPhones with NFC Tools v2.31 do not.

For the following comparison the NDEF memory is written with a pre-loaded text data record.

NFC Tools on Android reports the following: Tag Type: ISO 14443-4 Technologies Available: IsoDep, NfcB, Ndef Serial Number: <valid chip SN> Format: NFC Forum Type 4 Text Record 1: UTF-8 (en) Hello World!

NFC Tools on iOS (iPhones) reports the following: Tag Type: ISO 7816 Technologies Available: Unknown Serial Number: <valid chip SN> Format: <no entry, not listed> Text Record 1: <no entry, not listed> Error response: "This nfc tag is not supported"

Attempting to write a text message with NFC Tools on the iPhones returns "An error occurred during writing process"

Other NDEF records (URL and Search) written into memory with the Samsung NFC Tools are also not readable with the iPhones.

The iPhones are able to obtain the tag type and serial number of the chip, so there is some limited interaction.

Is there a compatibility issue with the Type B tag, or perhaps something else?

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Answer 1

Engineer OP

Apple

4d

iPhone supports ISO1443B tags.

Why a 3rd party app is giving you an error is beyond what we can answer. If you are able to write your own app for this and share some logs and the actual error codes you are getting, we can take a look.

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Answer 2

RiesJL OP

2d

Thank you for confirming ISO 14443-B support. Given that, I looked deeper at the tag characteristics and the NDEF data record. I used NXP TagInfo to gather more detail about the data written on the tag and its characteristics. TagInfo returns the following information when reading the RF430 tag with the Android system (3 screenshots):

Reading RF430 with the iPhone only gives:

I wrote the same "Hello, world!" message into an NXP NTAG213 and read it back. The results are (5 screenshots):

The NXP NTAG213 returns more information than the RF430, but the NDEF data is the same.

Gemini Memory Analysis

I also asked Gemini to analyze the RF430 tag contents and it said the data was a valid NDEF record and container:

Let's break down the provided data and analyze its validity for an NTAG 4 tag (which is an ISO 14443 Type 4 tag).

Tag Selection (0xD2, 0x76, 0x00, 0x00, 0x85, 0x01, 0x01)

• This sequence looks like a typical SELECT command for an NXP tag. The specific AID (Application Identifier) used (D2760000850101) is the standard AID for NXP's NTAG and MIFARE Ultralight C tags.

• This part is valid.

Capability Container (CC)

• 0xE1, 0x03: Correct magic number for CC.

• 0x00, 0x0F: CCLEN (Capability Container Length). This is 15 bytes, which is correct.

• 0x20: CC version 2.0, also correct.

• 0x00, 0x3B: MLe (Maximum R-APDU data size). 59 bytes, valid.

• 0x00, 0x34: MLc (Maximum C-APDU data size). 52 bytes, valid.

• 0x04, 0x06: File Control TLV. Tag=0x04 (NDEF file), Length=0x06. Correct.

• 0xE1, 0x04: File Identifier for NDEF file. Correct.

• 0x0B, 0xDF: Max NDEF size. 3039 bytes. This appears to be correct for a NTAG 424 DNA.

• 0x00: NDEF file read access condition. Read access without security. Correct.

• 0x00: NDEF file write access condition. Write access without security. Correct.

• Validity: The CC is valid.

NDEF File Identifier

• 0xE1, 0x04: File identifier for the NDEF file. This matches the one specified in the CC, which is correct.

NDEF Data

• 0x00, 0x14: NLEN (NDEF Message Length). 20 bytes.

• 0xD1, 0x01, 0x10, 0x54, 0x02, 0x65, 0x6E: NDEF Record Header. This is a valid Text record header.

o D1: MB=1, ME=0, CF=0, SR=1, IL=0, TNF=1 (Well-known type)

o 01: Type Length =1

o 10: Payload Length = 16

o 54: Type = 'T' (Text)

o 02: Status byte. Indicates UTF-8 and language code length.

o 65, 6E: Language code "en".

• 0x48, 0x65, 0x6C, 0x6C, 0x6f, 0x2c, 0x20, 0x77, 0x6f, 0x72, 0x6C, 0x64, 0x21: Payload "Hello, world!". 13 bytes.

• Validity Issues: o The NLEN value (20 bytes) does not match the actual NDEF message length (13 bytes payload + 7 bytes header = 20 bytes). Therefore, the NLEN is correct.

o The payload size of 13 bytes plus the header size of 7 bytes equals 20 bytes. That matches the NLEN.

o The NDEF data is valid.

Overall Validity The entire data sequence appears to be valid for an NTAG 4 tag. The CC is correctly formatted, and the NDEF message is well-formed.

In summary: The provided data is valid and can be written to an NTAG 4 tag. The tag selection, capability container, and NDEF message are all correctly formatted.

Do you see anything in the comparison between the RF430 and NTAG213 screenshot data that would cause the iPhone to error out and reject it?

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