The confusing case of two Android “NFC TagInfo” apps
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/10/15
For a long time, I had an “NFC TagInfo” app on my phone. It worked well, and combined simplicity with straightforward easy use.
To my dismay, when upgrading to a new phone, the icon had been copied over, but the app was unavailable as per the cropped¹ image on the right.
The important message there was “Your device isn’t compatible with this version” which, as I quickly discovered, means “This app has not been updated to be compatible with the Android version you run” (without telling up until which Android version it would run on).
What I however initially missed on the screenshot was the [Wayback/Archive] Michael Roland bit (this is his Stack Overflow profile link where he, as on [Wayback/Archive] User Michael Roland – Stack Exchange, explicitly mentions [Wayback/Archive] NFC TagInfo – Apps on Google Play²).
However, when you search you get another NFC TagInfo app: NFC TagInfo by NXP.
The confusing bit
“NFC TagInfo” was named “NFC TagInfo” in the apps list on my Android phone which makes it extremely easy to find.
“NFC TagInfo by NXP” is actually named “TagInfo” in the apps list on my Android phone which means you cannot find it searching for “NFC”.
So not being able to find “NFC TagInfo” on my phone by app name, I went searching for…
Alternatives
These are the alternatives I am still experimenting with; none so far seems to be as easy as the one I started with.
- [Wayback/Archive] NFC TagInfo by NXP – Apps on Google Play
- [Wayback/Archive] NFC TagWriter by NXP – Apps on Google Play
- [Wayback/Archive] NFC Tools – Android Apps on Google Play
Found via [Wayback/Archive] NFC TagInfo by NXP Alternatives and Similar Apps | AlternativeTo was the first search hit of the «”NFC TagInfo” alternative» query below.
The odd thing: there is no page on that site for “NFC TagInfo” at all, see [Wayback/Archive] nfc-taginfo: 404 – Page not found | AlternativeTo
BTW: None of the NXP apps are open source at [Wayback/Archive] NXP NFC Project · GitHub.
Queries
- [Wayback/Archive] “NFC TagInfo” “Your device isn’t compatible with this version” at DuckDuckGo
- [Wayback/Archive] “Your device isn’t compatible with this version” at DuckDuckGo
- [Wayback/Archive] “NFC TagInfo” unavailable at DuckDuckGo
- [Wayback/Archive] “NFC TagInfo” alternative at DuckDuckGo
- [Wayback/Archive] nfc taginfo – Android Apps on Google Play
- [Wayback/Archive] nfc taginfo – Android Apps on Google Play
- [Wayback/Archive] “NFC TagInfo” “Michael Roland” at DuckDuckGo
- [Wayback/Archive] “NFC TagInfo” “Hagenberg” at DuckDuckGo
--jeroen
¹ Image cropping thanks to my blog post How To Scale and Crop Images with CSS object-fit | DigitalOcean
Image: [Wayback/Archive] 455516908-d545ae1b-aeda-4b2b-81c2-f25227064510.png (651×1454)
² The app actually is owned by [Wayback/Archive] Near Field Communication – NFC Research Lab Hagenberg: Home. Their homepage however has not been updated since 2018 so I think they ceased to exist.
The app introduction was in 2011 with the page [Wayback/Archive] Near Field Communication – NFC Research Lab: Ever wanted to know what is stored on your NFC tags?
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 
Leave a comment