[1]Apple Pay Suica Service Mode by Joel Breckinridge Bassett:

    Apple Pay Suica Service Mode is a weird function that doesn't have a
    counterpart on the Android Suica side. The JR East [2]Apple Pay
    Suica help page mentions this. The iPhone Service Mode explanation
    says, "Service Mode will allow station agents and kiosks to help
    with any issues with your card." The street reality is that station
    agents don't need you to put the device in Service Mode, just fork
    it over and they can fix any Suica issue for you.
    This difference exists because Osaifu Keitai smartphones (and the
    candy wrapper Google Pay Suica) have a dedicated FeliCa chip. Apple
    created it's own custom FeliCa implementation hosted on the
    [3]iPhone A Series and Apple Watch S Series SOC. But the Apple
    implementation did not really mature until [4]A12 Bionic and the
    Express Card (Student ID)/Express Transit cards with power reserve
    feature. The A12 Bionic Secure Enclave supports limited NFC
    transactions that bypass iOS. It's the same way a dedicated FeliCa
    chip works on Android.
    This means that Apple Pay Suica on non-A12 devices requires
    iOS/watchOS to be up and running for Suica to work. Unfortunately
    this also means that different iOS versions sometimes have
    performance issues on non-A12 devices and that iOS occasionally
    drops the ball. Fortunately [5]iOS 12.3 fixes all issues and has
    great Apple Pay Suica Express Transit performance. iOS 12.3 is a
    highly recommended update.
    The [6]Dead Suica Notifications/No Suica Balance Update problem
    happened occasionally and the way to fix it is to turn on Service
    Mode and leave it until it turns off automatically in 60 seconds or
    the screen goes dark, whichever comes first.
    In this case Service Mode syncs and reconciles iOS with the Suica
    Stored Fare (SF) balance information from the FeliCa embedded Secure
    Element implemented inside the A Series/S Series Secure Enclave.
    Service Mode seems pretty useless on A12 Bionic devices. I imagine
    it's there more for show than actual functionality, although Service
    Mode is useful for [7]cash recharge on 7-Eleven ATM machines where
    you have to put the device upside down to capture the ATM NFC
    antenna hit area.

  It's been odd the last few times I've needed assistance that I didn't
  need to put my watch or iPhone in service mode. Which is good, because
  I can never remember how to do it.

  The service mode tip could have fixed my last snafu, and I had no idea
  about 7-11 ATMs!

  Joel, keep up the great work!
    __________________________________________________________________

  My original entry is here: [8]PSA: Apple Pay Suica Service Mode. It
  posted Tue, 11 Jun 2019 21:31:24 +0900.
  Filed under: Japan,

References

  1. https://atadistance.net/2019/06/09/apple-pay-suica-service-mode/
  2. http://appsuica.okbiz.okwave.jp/faq/show/1508?back=front/category:search&category_id=1&commit=&keyword=ヘルプモード&page=1&site_domain=default&site_id=1&sort=sort_keyword&sort_order=desc&utf8=✓
  3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple-designed_processors
  4. https://atadistance.net/2018/09/14/a12-bionic-nfc-on-ios-12/
  5. https://atadistance.net/2019/05/11/ios-12-3-update-and-apple-pay-suica-performance/
  6. https://atadistance.net/2019/01/04/ios-12-suica-performance-issues-update/
  7. https://youtu.be/S-Vt1hj5DGE
  8. https://www.prjorgensen.com/?p=2978

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