Now that the IPhone6 has been available (in some markets at least), I would really like to know if someone has any information (or even tried) if the NFC chip inside the IPhone6 can be detected by an external reader? And in case it is possible, how much info can be read?
I know that there is currently no API access to NFC for IOS apps, so I would like to go a different route for now and simply identify an IPhone6 by holding it onto an external NFC reader.
In theory, the answer should be yes: iPhone 6 works in card emulation mode, so it must present itself to a reader as a card.
The readable info is not probably much, but at least you should be able to poll the existence of the payment app - sending SELECT APDUs (APDUs = commands to interact with smart cards such as the one being emulated by the iPhone) to known applications.
By sending an empty SELECT or a SELECT targeting the Issuer Security Domain (a management application which AID is usually A000000151000000 or A000000003000000) the card should answer with a data structure with information about the card or the chip.
Now I just need to get my hands on one and test it...