iPhone 5: To Have Or Not To Have NFC Chip?

The stories are all over the place about whether the future iPhone 5 will have an NFC chip. The latest is brought to us from a tweet by Forbes tech reporter Elizabeth Woyke who says that the next iPhone will have NFC capabilities. NFC stands for Near Field Communication and it allows users to simply wave their phone over sensors to pay for things, and supports more mobile media sharing.

"Just met with an entrepreneur who says the iPhone 5 *will* have NFC...according to his friend, who works for Apple," tweeted Woyke earlier today. The iPhone 5 would work great with NFC because of the credit card information Apple already has with payments over iTunes for movies, apps, and music.

Earlier in the week The Independent reported that the next iPhone wouldn't have NFC because Apple was concerned that there wasn't a clear standard across the industry. So you'll have to take this latest bit of information with a good pinch of salt. It probably is only a matter of time before Apple decides to pull the trigger on NFC for future iPhones. Some Android phones already support the technology.

[via Business Insider]