Where is the NFC antenna on a phone?
Somewhere on the back, occupying one small area, and there is no universal position. What decides it is everything else competing for room inside a phone: the camera, the battery, the wireless charging coil and the metal frame. It moves between models for that reason.
Always the back, never the screen
The coil sits behind the rear of the phone, so anything applied to the screen is irrelevant to tag reading. Screen protectors come up constantly and have no bearing at all.
It occupies one region rather than the whole back. Present the wrong part of the phone and nothing happens, which is not a fault and is the commonest reason a tag appears dead.
The area is roughly the size of a large coin, though the useful region is a little wider than the coil itself.
Why it moves between models
A phone's back is crowded. The camera assembly, the battery, the wireless charging coil and structural metal all claim space, and the NFC coil takes what is left.
Metal is the constraint that matters most. The coil cannot sit behind a metal component and work, so its position is dictated by where the metal is not.
Since those internal layouts change every generation, so does the antenna position. That is why no general map exists and why one cannot be maintained.
It also explains why the position is rarely advertised. It is an engineering outcome rather than a feature.
The patterns that do exist
Upper back, near the camera cluster, is common. Centre back is common. Those two cover a great deal of the market between them.
Phones with wireless charging put a large coil in the centre, which pushes the NFC coil elsewhere or wraps it around.
Very large phones have proportionally more back and the same small coil, so the usable region is a smaller fraction of the surface.
None of that is precise enough to act on, which is why the practical answer is always to find it rather than to look it up.
Finding it on a given phone
Take the case off, lay a large tag flat, and move the phone across it slowly, several seconds per pass. Speed is what makes this fail.
When it reads, note the position against a visible feature such as the camera or the logo, and confirm by returning to it twice.
Write it down if you support several devices. Re establishing it later is the same work again.
And for a deployment, do not expect visitors to do any of this. Design so that an approximate approach works, which means a large tag and a printed target.
Frequently asked questions
Is the antenna behind the screen?
No. It is behind the rear of the phone, which is why screen protectors have no effect on tag reading.
Do two phones of the same model share a position?
Yes, since the hardware is identical. Different cases and accessories are what make them behave differently.
Why do manufacturers not publish it?
It is an engineering outcome that changes each generation rather than a specification anyone maintains.
Does the position change with an update?
No, it is physical. What can change is whether NFC is enabled and how the phone behaves in the background.