I have a terrible habit of losing things, so a small platoon of Tile trackers is attached to all my important stuff. Keys, wallet, bag, other bag, they all sing when I can’t find them. But there are limits to Tile’s Bluetooth tracking, generally a “hot or cold” kind of rangefinder. According to a new APK teardown, Google’s Find My Device gadgets will get better very soon.
9to5Google reports on some intriguing new hooks in the Google Find My Device app, indicating that the developers are working on a “Compass” feature. It is believed to take advantage of the ultra-wideband (UWB) capabilities on the latest devices. Both Apple’s AirTags and Samsung’s SmartTags use this technology, but so far Google’s version of the system does not.
Newer devices compatible with Google Find My Device, such as the Moto Tag tracker, include UWB capabilities, even though Google’s app doesn’t take advantage of it. UWB trackers can use some very fancy radio frequency tricks to give you much more precise information about where an item is in physical space, including a direction relative to another device like a phone or tablet.
So a compass-style interface that literally points you in the right direction makes sense. But as with all app teardown studies, the presence of code pointing to a feature does not mean it will automatically be implemented in a future update. We will pay attention to the direction in the future.
