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Comment by AndrewDucker | Hacker News Reader

Annoyingly, though, you can't get a device that is trackable on both iPhone and Android networks.

Which is annoying, because I have an Android and my wife has an iPhone, and it would be nice to be able to both track the same objects.

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Aren't there third-party devices like Tile that you could use? Sure, it can't be tracked by every iOS and Android device, but it's not like there aren't trackers that you and your wife could both use.

True, there are devices that work with both. But they use their own, much smaller, tracking network, rather than having one ubiquitous network.

How does the tracking network size affect functionality?

> How does the tracking network size affect functionality?

Ability to actually find lost items. AirTags are so successful (in the US) because of the ubiquity of iPhones which are, effectively, constantly reporting on the location of detected devices. A smaller network of listening/reporting devices will not be as effective unless it happens to be very popular right in the area the device was lost.

If there are more devices that can see your stolen device, there is a higher likelihood you will be able to track your stolen device.

The devices don't have any GPS. Instead, they have a unique ID that phones see, and report their location to Apple/Google/Tile. If the network is bigger/denser, then your devices is more likely to be detected, and detected more often.

These trackers work by connecting to nearby phones, with the phone supplying GPS information and uploading it via its cell connection. So a Tile tracker will only get its location updated if someone with the Tile app is nearby, and since Tile users are relatively rare the tracking is only reliable in very busy places.

Apple and now Google trackers on the other hand build this functionality into the OS (or Google's near-OS bundle for Android), so if basically any phone comes within range of the tracker it will provide a location update.

You can always glue two Chipolos together. Interesting that they don't offer such product yet though.

CEO of Tile/Life360 here - I made a meta comment but I'll call out that because all Life360 users now scan for Tiles, and we are on 1 in 8 phones in the US, our network is actually huge. The small network thing is a misperception. We bought Tile knowing we could supercharge their previously small network.

Please stop promoting your product multiple times in the thread, it feels like spam and doesn't add much value to this discussion.

I think it's pretty fair to make this clarification and I don't fault a company for wanting to squash misinformation about their product. I found it to be a useful comment because I had no sense of the scale of the Tile network, and I did have an intuition that it was much smaller.

I have zero affiliation with Tile and I have never bought any device like this of any sort, but this is useful information to me as someone who has been the target of frequent bicycle theft.

The criticism I will agree with is that it does feel worded a with a bit of a corporate polished tone that does give that vibe. edit: I think it's largely the "supercharge" descriptor.

I disagree. There's a clear disclaimer of who they are, and they're responding to a specific criticism.

Their comment at the top level also has that disclaimer and while it's written in a bit of a marketing tone, it adds substantive value to the discussion.

One major value of HN is that we get people who are actively involved in building various pieces of technology directly engaging with the community. When there's a strong disclosure of who they are, that's almost always a good thing. (Of course, some organisations don't encourage that disclosure and that's a little more ambiguous).

Like @RobertRies, I found this comment useful. I've never bought a Tile but now that I know they have this much penetration I'm somewhat more likely to. I also had not seen the other posts by GP, so don't find it redundant.

This very same company used to sell real-time location data of your family: https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/9/22820381/tile-life360-loc...

Personally I wouldn't purchase anything connected to that network, even if they now say they stopped selling precise data.

I was in the location data space. These guys got out completely. It was a big loss to the industry since they had great coverage. They definitely weren’t lying about that.

Wow, that's awesome. This is the closest I've been to someone directly exploiting my privacy for financial gain. Thank you for linking that article.

I'm a Tile owner (soon to be ex-owner), and I think your response is a little disingenuous. When Google announced recently they'd open up their Find My Device network to bluetooth trackers, I assumed for sure Tile would be on board. I was dismayed to discover Tile specifically has no plans to join the Android Find My Device network, unlike Chipolo and Pebblebee. So I switched to Pebblebee.

The Life360 network may be sizable but it's going to me nowhere close to the iOS or Android networks, and it's going to get a lot smaller with folks like me leaving. If Tile supported the Android Find My Device network I would have stayed.

Thanks for pointing me to Pebblebee. Recommend trying it out?

I lost my wallet in Seattle, which fwiw is a first tier tech city and it still is detected once every 4 days

Thank you, that's useful to know.

Tile is essentially useless, especially compared to airtags, annoyingly.

I had a tile, however I fianlly got rid of it when I was unable to locate my keys in my house. It sent me on a wild goose chase saying that it had been last seen near my bins.

I was in the same room as them for the first 15 minute of it beaconing.

Airtags seem to acutally work reliably, and because you don't need the app running, has a good network to find them outside of my house

A true hacker would duct tape the airtag to the android phone and call it a day.

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