Because of the AirTag’s compatibility with Apple products, I would give an AirTag to an iPhone owner. But I would give a Tile to a person with an Android phone.
The AirTag is also far from perfect. I wish they were louder — they are very quiet compared with Tiles — so playing sound wasn’t very helpful for finding them. I also did not love that for most purposes, the AirTag requires buying a separate accessory, like a key ring, to hold the tracker.
In contrast, the Tile has a hole punched into its corner to attach to a key ring or zipper head. (The $29 price tag of the AirTag is eclipsed by Apple’s $35 leather key ring.)
Still, ultrawideband gives AirTag a major advantage — and even Tile thinks so. CJ Prober, Tile’s chief executive, said last week that Apple had refused to give his company access to the iPhone’s ultrawideband chip to make its own trackers that work with it.
“They launched a competing product, and they’re leveraging that technology that allows it to do things that our product can’t,” Mr. Prober said in an interview. “We really think competition should be fair. Fair competition leads to better outcomes for consumers.”
Apple said in a statement that it had worked hard to protect the privacy of iPhone users’ location data, adding that it embraced competition. This month, it announced that it would soon release a plan for other companies to take advantage of the ultrawideband technology inside Apple devices.
I’m happy to wait for those products using this neat wireless technology.
Because of its greater efficiency at transmitting data, ultrawideband could make future wireless devices immensely better, Mr. Nabki said. As an example, he cited cord-free earphones that connect instantly, use very little battery and sound as good as wired ones.
That sounds much cooler than finding house keys.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/28/technology/personaltech/apple-airtag-review-tile.html
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