Apple announced its AirTags in April 2021 into a fairly crowded market segment, that already has some established players, such as Tile. We have been using Tile for several years now and the Tile Pro tag is a useful device for loaction tracking. We are currently evaluating the Apple AirTags to see how they compare and to identify other potential applications in our contextual smart home.
The advantage that AirTags have over devices/services like Tile, are that all of the world's iPhones that support Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) form part of the tracking network, so coverage around the world will be a lot better. Each AirTag sends out a secure Bluetooth signal that can be detected by nearby devices in the Find My network. These devices send the location of your AirTag to iCloud, so you can go to the 'Find My' app and see it on a map. The whole process is anonymous and encrypted to protect your privacy. And it's also efficient, so there is no need to worry about battery life or data usage.
The AirTags cost £29.00 each or £99.00 for four. This is slightly higher than the competition but, Apple charge a lot more for the accessories that allow you to attach it to a keyring for example. Our plan is to design and 3D print our accessories, holders and keyrings for our AirTags.
Aside from Bluetooth LE, Apple's AirTags benefit from two other technologies, Ultra-Wideband and NFC. NFC enables a more direct form of communication with anyone who finds it. You can set up a message that will be displayed if the finder of the AirTag taps their NFC-enabled smartphone against it, which could provide extra information like contact details.
Ultra-Wideband enables highly accurate positional data to be acquired by an iPhone, which Apple calls 'Precision Finding'. This is handy in a room as it will tell you roughly how far away the AirTag is from the iPhone, as well as what direction it is in. This feature only works iPhones with UWB support, which is the iPhone 11 and iPhone 12 for now. Most tags (including Tile Pro) can be triggered to make a noise, which makes it easier to find them in a room.
All three models are powered by a CR2032 coin cell battery, one typically used in watches, which can be replaced by the user. Battery life is generally 1 year for each model, though Apple says it can be used for longer than a year per battery.
In the case of the Find My network and its Lost Mode, the transmissions from the trackers are picked up by any supported iPhone without needing any apps to be preinstalled. All iPhones are automatically part of the network and will report back via Apple's platform. This is a huge step forward in terms of coverage.
For Tile, the Tile Network's Community Find feature relies on the Tile app being installed on all user's devices and the Bluetooth 'pings' are only picked up on smartphones that have the app installed. An advantage of Tile is that the app works on both iOS and Android, so there is in theory, a larger set of devices that could 'see' a Tile tracker (assuming everyone installs the app).
One clever feature of the Find My network is that it will warn users if someone else's AirTag is detected in their bag or pocket and is traveling with them. This is an anti-stalking feature, preventing someone from using AirTag to track another person without their knowledge.
