Debate Begins Over iPhone 5 NFC

As it stands right now, the word on the street is that the iPhone 5 will not feature near field communications (NFC), but recent rumblings from friends-of-friends have people thinking that it may be a possible feature after all.

Elizabeth Woyke over at Forbes expressed her belief that NFC may make it onto Apple's next smartphone because "an entrepreneur who is working on a top-secret NFC product told [her] today that he believes the iPhone 5 will have NFC." This source, in turn, cited a "friend" who works at Apple as a reliable source for his information.

Aside from this supposed inside source at Apple, nobody seems to have any particular reason to believe that NFC on the iPhone 5 is a possibility; they just do. Woyke's entrepreneur friend also pointed to NFC manufacturers that he is in talks with for his product, who "expect" the iPhone 5 to have NFC. Woyke then cited Dan Frommer at Business Insider, who also thinks an NFC-enabled iPhone 5 is "plausible."

What Is NFC?
NFC technology involves a small chip being embedded into the handset, which, in turn, allows users to interact with other NFC chips. With this technology, people could do things like make credit card payments with a swipe of their phones.

Would it make sense if the iPhone 5 had NFC? Yes, given that Google, the competition, built NFC into its latest version of Android for smartphones (Gingerbread). But nobody has even attempted to cite any sources or information to support their claims, indicating that the situation has deteriorated to rampant speculation and nothing more.

Given its past timing, Apple will likely reveal its next iPhone in June, so only then will we know for sure whether or not it will be NFC-enabled.

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