When it comes to smart trackers, the Moto Tag might be the best one we’ve seen for Android
If you told me 10 years ago that people would be falling over themselves to PAY to build Orwellian tracking network on behalf of corporations for no reason at all I’d have called you completely insane.
The reason is because people are too irresponsible and inept to keep track of their own property properly, but yes, unfortunately it is a sad reality.
I’ll just stick with Tile. Tons of people already and it works. This article really didn’t do a fine point of showcasing the pros and cons of different options.
Sadly, as long as the tracking network is opt-in, it’ll never match an AirTag.
We need something decentralized and private by design. Open standards are a must
Main problem is that by default android devices are tracking lost tags only in crowded places like airports. Only the devices where their users changed the default are contributing to find the tag anywhere else.
Now, I made a game with my friend on how easy it would be to find an hidden airtag and I found out that in a crowded indoor place is almost impossible to find it. Because of no GPS and limited reception each phone reported a very different coordinate and it was jumping everywhere. I wasn’t able to find it at all. Instead, when it was hidden in a park, I went exactly where it was shown in the map, waited for the iPhone to connect to it, make it sound and follow the directions: found!
So, a tracker that works only in crowded airports and malls is wasted money IMHO. Nobody is changing default settings and the notification that Google sent to change the default to everyone was even “scary” for a non-technical: dismissed/ignored by everyone
If the goal is to find your stuff, is better the airtag, if the goal is to stalk someone and just get some approximate location, then this stuff can be ok
“there are multiple standards! we should consolidate them into a new standard!”
there are now multiple+n standards
Wake me up when a foss implementation is created. These things are effectively e-waste at the blink of an eye.
They aren’t even standards. They are totally proprietary and vendor linked
