Samsung Electronics' high-profile launch of branded NFC tags in the U.S. uses nonstandard technology, NFC Times has learned.
The Samsung TecTiles tags, launched June 13 in the U.S., use Mifare Classic chips from NXP Semiconductors, which is not one of the four tag types standardized by the NFC Forum.
The use of Mifare Classic chips means that only phones or tablets carrying NFC chips from NXP would be able to read the tags. That takes in all Samsung and all other Android-based NFC phones, but leaves out several NFC-enabled BlackBerry models that Research In Motion has rolled out starting last year. These phones use NFC chips from Inside Secure and can’t read Mifare.
It was a strange move by Samsung and it's a shame that they didn't go down the NFC Forum compliant route. Clearly most of the tags will only be encoded by Samsung users for their Samsung phones but it doesn't generally help the promotion of NFC to use 1k tags. The NTAG203 chips would have provided a decent amount of memory for most applications, would have cost less and worked more universally.
Does however highlight perhaps the need for more cost-effective (ie, without encryption tech) larger memory (1k,2k) chips that are Forum Compliant.