I find it very difficult to believe that multiple phones, from multiple manufacturers, owned by multiple people are all "broken". Normal NFC tags read just fine within the expected tolerances, with all tests done.

from what i've been able to see, the ring is working as it was designed and so are all the phones. The ring has just been engineered in a way that makes it's operational tolerances SO sensitive that it doesn't properly account for differences in handsets and use in the real world.
I guess I was just expecting too much.

on the Note3 the back plate is just a piece of plastic and the NFC antenna seems to be built into the phone just next to the battery. Usually the note3 can read a standard tag anywhere on the backside of the phone, through a thin case.

I get that the ring is supposed to be harder to read than a regular tag but this is ridiculous.
at this point i've tried the ring with several of my co-worker's handsets and i'm getting similar results.

If what you're telling me is that this is normal operating for the ring then it's not fit for purpose. I've tried it on 7 different handsets and 2 tablets and only 1 of the tablets has worked even close to consistently.

If the advice you're giving people is to open up their phones and adjust sensitive hardware, then this is just a bad product.

Gotta say, i'm seriously disappointed; I had high hopes for the NFC ring but what's shipped is product that seems to have barely been tested and does not work for it's stated uses.

Thanks for your prompt responses; I appreciate your input.

ok, I tested it on a Nexus4 with no luck at all, but a first gen Nexus 7 picked it up ok; so I assume the ring is working as intended?
to get it working with the Note3 I ended up having to remove the back-plate; seems the sweet spot is actually inside the phone.

This is not a viable option for unlocking a phone or transferring information to someone else.
Unless you can suggest a way to improve performance to a useable degree then I'm just going to write this one up as a failure; nice idea but doesn't work in practice. Nice looking ring though, so not a total loss :)

I Made sure all NFC addons were disabled or removed.
systematically tapping the ring across the back of the phone. tried the ring in both horizontal and vertical positions.
tried using the heatmap from the app to help locate a working spot.
tried removing any dust or anything from the inside of the case.
all of it came to nothing.

Is this ring defective? the Note3 is pretty good at picking up NFC tags at almost any point on the backplate.

The whole point of NFC is that i's easy to read, if the ring is so sensitive about positioning, orientation and everything else it makes it useless as method of unlocking the phone or transferring data.

I'm having similar problems.
I got the regular ring (not the alpha)
All other tags I've got work fine but the ring itself does not work in any usable way. I've got it to read the ring twice in 50+ attempts.
If there's no way to improve this situation then the ring was a total waste of money. Very disappointed.