On the eve of new iPhones and new Apple Pay features with a growing transit card footprint, it is good to take a moment to remember the less than stellar NFC performance of the original iPhone X. The 2 year iPhone X Apple Care clock hits dead hour on November 3. I heart any iPhone X transit users with Apple Pay Octopus in Hong Kong or Apple Pay Ventra in Chicago who…
- discover their iPhone X NFC is wonky on transit gates
- discover their iPhone X Apple Care is expired
As much as my iPhone X Suica performance was a headache, my iPhone XS Suica performance is a joy. To be honest, I have not kept up with the iPhone X Suica NFC issue as most of the users who complained about having the problem have long since gotten Rev. B iPhone X replacements and moved on, or moved on to Pixel 3 JP FeliCa devices.
There are a few holdouts. Some report that iOS 12.4 has mostly eliminated transit gate errors for them, but that iPhone X NFC performance is still sluggish and wonky. Other holdouts report that iPhone X NFC is still a problem.
Most iPhone X NFC problem devices are sleeper cells, the user doesn’t live in a demanding enough NFC use environment to actively notice the issue. The iOS 13 release is due September 19, Apple Pay Octopus and Apple Pay Ventra should be online soon after, barely a month before iPhone X Apple Care dead hour.
Getting a replacement iPhone X for unacceptable NFC performance was never easy, but it’s about to become extremely difficult, if not impossible. Good luck to all iPhone X users out there, may the NFC be with you.