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Hi…just wondering what the favoured luggage trackers are nowadays. I’m on Android, wife on iPhone ?
Airtags are marvellous but you need an iPhone/iPad/Mac and Apple account.
There are various Android options like Tile but nothing can compete with the number of Apple devices in terms of the chance of some passing person’s phone picking up your tracker and reporting its location to the mothership.
Not much has changed since this totally amazing thread:
edit – @Frogee has posted a thread link
If your have both operating systems available get an Apple Air tag and a Galaxy Smart Tag 2. Then youre covered.
I use Galaxy Smart tags and they are brilliant. They have features over and above apple air tags.
I found them vwry useful when Iberia sent my bicycle box to the wrong airport and informed me the bike was lost. I posted a thread about my experience at the time.
@kiley that wasn’t a thread, that was some kind of audience participatory detective novel 🙂
Cheers guys, and for the earlier link which I had forgotten.
Tile works well if you are Android rather than Apple. Thus far we have used it to locate my lost car key and, much more importantly, Clever Trevor the cat. (Although he can’t be that bl@@dy clever as he keeps trying to wander off.)
Would second the recommendation for a Samsung SmartTag if the Android phone is a Samsung. This can be located by any passing Samsung phone – just like Airtags can be located by any passing iPhone. There are a lot of Apple and Samsung phones out there, so SmartTag and AirTag work very well.
Tile can only be located by other phones that have the Tile app installed, and I suspect there are rather fewer of those around. Of course, unless your phone is from Apple or Samsung then Tile is your only option.
I think the smart tag is only located by samsung galaxy phones. Not any samsung phone.
Either way, it only take one phone to ping off the tag to give a more accurate location than apple air tag.
I never had any issues locating my luggage with smart tag
The galaxy radar feature used on your own phone is very good to locate yourself when within Bluetooth range.
@kiley Yes, you would appear to be correct – according to the Samsung website it is just Galaxy devices. On that basis, I would expect SmartTag to be substantially behind AirTag in terms of number of devices tracking the tags.
Gego is a subscription product but locates independently of proximity to other devices.
Trackers basically fall into two categories:
Traditional GPS trackers: There have a GPS device to determine location, and a cellular modem to provide a connection to the mobile phone network to allow them to report their location to a server. They don’t rely on nearby phones to report their location, and are widely used commercially. They are
* Expensive
* Heavy
* Short battery life (requires recharging every couple of weeks for all but the largest/heaviest trackers)
* Require a subscription (someone has to pay for that SIM card that connects to the mobile network(
* Not allowed to by carried on aircraft – well technically you can, but only if they’re switched off which would defeat the whole purpose for luggage tracking. (There were a couple of companies a decade or so ago that were trying to develop GPS luggage trackers that automatically switched their mobile connection off during fight, but to the best of my knowledge all of them failed to produce a viable product and as far as I know there is no such tracker approved by IATA for use on a passenger flight).The other category of tracker (AirTag, SmartTag, Tile and others) are basically a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacon that broadcasts periodically and relies on participating nearby phones to detect the beacon and report its location. These devices have no ability to determine their own location, nor to talk to the mobile phone network directly, and (unless you are within Bluetooth range of the tracker yourself) rely on other phones to detect your beacon and report its location. That’s clearly a downside, in that if no participating phone every comes within range you will never locate it. However, these devices are
* Cheap
* Small
* Long battery life from a single coin cell
* No ongoing fees
* Crucially, as of a couple of years ago, are IATA-approved for use in flight.I’ve owned and used both kinds of tracker but I’m afraid your only option for a luggage tracker, legally at least, is to use the second category,
Unless there’s a new development I’m unaware of?
I’d also point out that traditional GPS trackers, apart from being illegal to use on a plane (they are effectively a mobile phone, so would need to be switched off) generally don’t work well in buildings. Great for tracking machinery on a building site – but unlikely to be useful in locating luggage in the bowels of an airport.
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