It has come to our attention that some NFC tags do not work with the latest BlackBerry devices. Digging into this matter, there are actually a few answers to this. So in light of the potential, here we have a dedicated post to see what will be supported and why.It’s a fact that of the many makes and types of NFC tags that are out there in the world, some comply 100% with the relevant NFC Forum and ISO standards whilst some do not. RIM worked hard to make the devices in line with those standards since for a technology like NFC to gain wide spread adoption, inter-operability between tags and devices and between devices themselves is absolutely crucial. That said, even if a tag complies fully with the technical standards, it’s still possible to write non-standard content to it, so we all have a responsibility to comply with those standards, not just the device vendors.

Now, an NFC tag is a smart card and it responds to ISO 7816-4 APDUs, so it’s possible to work with it at a lower level than would be the case when using the BlackBerry NDEFMessageListener Java® interface – which is how we’d normally seek to read an NFC tag from a BlackBerry® smartphone application.

Out of the box, these NFC tags do not work, but its also not limited to these tags. (MiFare 1k and 4k tags, MiFare Plus tags, Samsung ETC-TT1G6NGSTA (TecTile) NFC tags)
DESFire tags are not officially supported but since they use ISO7816-4 standard, they are actually usable.

Supported NFC Tags:
Type 1 – Topaz 96, Topaz 512
Type 2 – MiFare Ultra Light, MiFare Ultra Light C,  Infineon my-D Move,  Infineon my-D NFC
Type 3 – FeliCa RC-S965
Type 4 – MiFare DESFire EV1 (2k, 4k, 8k)

Simply put it, RIM was unable to get the license required to use the formatting which MiFare 1k/4k and MiFare Plus tags use to store the data.

Also, the BlackBerry only supports SmartPoster NDEF Format and not simple URI or Text format.

Did you spot any other tags? Let us know!