New Attitudes to UHF Revealed in Tokyo and Cambridge UK

The global standard for RFID enabled mobile phones is at HF, as with library books, cards, tickets, passports and so on. However, East Asian mobile phone companies have been trialling UHF for RFID enabled phones currently used at HF by 40 million Japanese to access transport and to buy things. The reason is that, as phones get smaller, it is increasingly difficult to get enough range with HF. One Western phone maker is starting to think along similar lines. Presumably they do not expect people to be required to keep one meter away from their phones! Will that be Near Field (range restricted) or Far Field (problems with water, metal, curved glass focussing the beam, fears for human health)? The situation remains fluid.