A while back I wrote a review of the Xteink X3 in which I said “Has NFC for, well, we’ll discuss that later”. Brian left a comment recently to ask “Will you still discuss the NFC later?” By later I had meant later in the review but it seems I never got round to it so I am rectifying that now.
What is it?
A Near-Field Communications tag is a small, passive microchip (i.e. requires no battery) with an antenna that wirelessly exchanges data with a nearby device—like a smartphone or card reader—over a distance of four centimetres or less using high-frequency radio waves. You will no doubt have used such a thing if you’ve used a card/phone for contactless payment, transport card such as Oyster in London or Smartrip in Washington or bought clothes in UNIQLO.
The Xteink X3 is equipped with NFC technology and, to my knowledge, the x3 is the only e-reader (so excluding the Tóng card) in the Xteink range that includes an NFC tag.
What can you do with it?
It is important to note that the NFC included in the X3 has no connection to the device software at all. It cannot be triggered, for example, to turn on the device and open your latest book, or put the device into hotspot mode. It is exactly the same as if you stuck an NFC sticker on the back of the device. The only advantage here is that it is internal.
The first thing I did was to open NFC Tools on my iPhone and try and read the tag. No joy. Turns out that NFC Tools cannot read or write to this tag on the iPhone. The iPhone Shortcuts app can read it but I’ll come back to that. This left me with an issue as to test it properly I’d need to be able to read and write to it so I had to source a suitable Android phone. Fortunately my Dad had a beaten and bashed up Samsung Galaxy S8 which worked just fine for what I needed.
Using the S8 I was able to see that the X3 has an ISO/IEC 14443-3 Type A NXP MIFARE Classic 1K.
The MIFARE Classic 1K
ISO/IEC 14443 is an international standard for contactless proximity cards:
- Part 1 covers the physical characteristics,
- Part 2 defines the radio interface, and
- Part 3 defines the initial communication, card selection and anti-collision procedures that allow a reader to identify and communicate with a card.
MIFARE Classic is NXP’s proprietary technology built on this Type A infrastructure. The “1K” refers to its 1,024 bytes of EEPROM memory, organised as 16 sectors, each containing four 16-byte blocks. Each sector has its own authentication keys and access controls, allowing data to be protected against unauthorised reading or writing. The chip requires no battery because it obtains its power from the reader’s radio field and can typically communicate over a distance of a few centimetres.
MIFARE Classic 1K was designed for applications such as public-transport tickets, access control, event tickets, loyalty systems and identification, but the memory can also be used for storing application-specific data. With the appropriate NFC reader and authentication keys, you can read and write its memory, configure access permissions, and use individual sectors for different purposes. It can therefore act as a programmable contactless token rather than simply storing a URL like many simpler NFC tags.
Looking at the options in NFC Tools you get a long list of things that can be written to the tag:
- Text
- URL / URI*
- Custom URL / URI*
- Unit.Link*
- Search*
- Payment Link*
- Social networks*
- Video*
- File
- Application
- Mail*
- Contact
- Phone number*
- SMS*
- Location
- Custom location
- Address
- Destination address
- Proximity search
- Street view
- Emergency
- Bluetooth
- Wi-Fi Network
- Data (custom record)
- HomeKit#
- Shortcut#
* these work on iOS
# in theory these would work on iOS (not Android) but NFC Tools on iOS cannot read or write to a MIFARE tag
Practical Uses
Playing around with the device and Android, I was able to do things such as open URLs in a browser, open X at @spokenlikeageek, start Google Maps, and navigate to an address. Trying the same on iOS, the URL and X works but not the directions; the tag is detected but it just says “No usable data found”. So the usefulness on iOS is more limited but you can use it in the same way as any other NFC tag and have it trigger an action via the Shortcuts app. For an example of what others have achieved take a look at this Reddit post.
I will probably use mine to trigger an action in Home Assistant such as turn off everything when I leave the house. What about you? What will you be using the NFC tag in the X3 for?
