Spot on and Apples patent pertains to connecting things with magnets (how that got thru I realy don't know beyond patent officers need better drug testing IMHO)

Spot on and Apples patent pertains to connecting things with magnets (how that got thru I realy don't know beyond patent officers need better drug testing IMHO). This is a magnetic sensor so Apple can do nothing. Maybe functionality is not enabled and this is why it is not mentioned. There were a few NFC phones that initialy in the earlier days did not mention they had NFC built in as the software was not ready to utilise it. Indeed there are probably many features in phones chipsets that don't get used, but are mearly a software update away. All technology has to some extent undocumented features - undocumented CPU instructions being a classic one of its time. maybe a better example is how some USB TV tuners can act as hardware for software radio's.