August 14, 2015: After tuning the antenna with a shunt capacitor, I was able to achieve a 4 cm read distance with my cell phone. This is a huge improvement from the ~ 1 cm distance before. In spite of this, I think the relatively large resonant capacitor that was required is shunting current away from the IC, leaving less power for it to measure and communicate. Only about 1/7th the current is making it to the IC. I think with proper antenna tuning, I can achieve about 7 times the current, and therefore 7 times the power and sqrt(7) times the distance!