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Apple's Rumored Tile Competitor 'AirTag' May Have Removable Coin-Shaped Battery Like the Tile Pro
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I actually think you have your first two points the wrong way round - finding where you lost connection is useful, the alarms aren't.
Knowing when you were last in range of something is pretty useful as it generally identifies the building you left it in, eg work, Colin's house, the bus station (if you left it on the actual bus, that's less useful*). Then you just go there and you're in range again so can use bluetooth to ping it and let the noise guide you right to it.
What doesn't work well with Tile, in my experience, is the geo-fencing. Firstly it's very limited, I found I could never get it set up just how I wanted. I need to know when I leave home without certain items (eg keys), or when I leave other items behind when I leave anywhere that *isn't home* (eg if my wallet isn't with me AND isn't at home, then it should alert me), and Tile doesn't do these funtions quite like that (I think it might just do the former, but it's been a while since I tried it so I may be misremembering or out of date). Secondly, in my testing it was utterly unreliable, just didn't work consistently.
As for crowdsourcing, that's the beauty of Apple doing it themselves - if it's enabled on every Apple device by default that's orders of magnitude more useful than just users of a specific app.** What would have been better would be them making an open standard so it could be enabled on Android devices too for ultimate coverage.
** will make * better too
Same here. Hopefully the battery will need to be replace every 6 months or more. Having to charge a device like AirTag frequently would be annoying, for it to be successful it needs to be hassle free.
So largish, fairly pricey items like Magic Trackpad and Magic Mouse, which dont need to be water resistant/proof have a non removable rechargeable battery, and items which should be realtively cheap and should be water resistant/proof have a replaceable battery. Hmmm.
Lol, wait...
Let me get this straight: you’re preemptively calling out people for not calling out Apple for having a product that nobody has seen, be a “copy” of of an obscure product, that you pulled out of your ass & are claiming that Apple will likely copy in the future.
I got that all correct, yeah??!!
I’m seriously hoping when you read this, you realize just exactly how that is steeped in equal measures of pomposity & insanity.
No. It’s the right size for the job, widely available and as you yourself just said it requires a screwdriver to remove. Sorry to break it to you but the world is full of things that are dangerous. We have a little children’s electronic book thing in our house And it has coin cell batteries behind a screw locked cover. Works for me.
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Better than throwing out the entire device because the lithium ion battery stopped working after too many charge cycles. That is the situation with air pods now and it’s terrible.
the most important thing for this device will be ****size****. The standard Tile is still big.
Is this one of those jokes where someone says ”yes,” and then you respond “i don’t even have a cat!” ?
Your reasoning is sound, but that sort of user replaceable battery hasn’t existed within the Apple ecosystem since you could swap out the battery in a MacBook Pro. I own about a half dozen Tile tags, and I was thrilled when they switched over to user replaceable batteries.
If anyone on this forum knows if there is a difference in battery efficiency between a coin battery and a rechargeable internal battery, that would be good to know. In my experience, it seems like those coin batteries tend to last pretty long, compared with rechargeable batteries, but I really have no idea what the actual numbers are.
Hopefully better than tile. Tile sucks and is relatively useless. I mean if you are in a hurry and need to find your keys super fast I guess they are ok assuming you can get within Bluetooth range ie you have a decent idea of where they are. I had them and overall in my opinion a waste of money.
This
If they don't allow to replace they battery they should at least give the possibility to bring the old tiles to the AS and get a new set at a low price, then they can replace the battery and use your tiles for a future customer.
There is too much waste, Apple consider itself a green company so I expect some environment friendly policies
Apparently the AirPods are just too small to service at all — that battery is way inside and glued in place. Perhaps a tracker like this would have a little more room. But still, if this rumor is true then paradoxically a disposable battery is a less environmentally damaging way to power the thing.
My idea would apply to AirPods as well. Instead of disposing them or forget them in a drawer it would be nice to bring the old ones to the AS and get a discount on a new pair. I don't know if Apple would be able to refurbish them, but at least they can properly recycle the various components.
Nothing is getting recycled from them because they're glued together and too dangerous and tedious to disassemble. So they're getting trashed when they're worn out, whether Apple is doing it or the consumer. Sure, they could give a monetary incentive to get people to buy new ones when (not if, when) the battery cycles out. But it's a pretty lame move to make AirPods effectively disposable, especially from a company that toots their own horn so much about being "green".
But if this rumor is true of the "AirTag" having a removable battery, that will hopefully mean the things will have a longer life cycle. It still sucks to be disposing of batteries, of course but unlike AA and AAA sizes, there are no rechargable options for coin cells.
They don’t need to be tediously disassembled to be recycled. They can just be split open or crushed and the components/materials separated via various manual, mechanical and chemical processes.
True, but there's a pretty significant difference between an actual user-facing device like a MacBook Pro, iPad, or iPhone and something that's more "utilitarian" like AirTags.
My mileage varies with CR2032 batteries depending on which ones I buy. Mainline brands like Duracell and Energizer easily last for up to a year in devices like my ecobee remote sensors, while cheaper brands may only give me 4-6 months. However, I can buy a three-pack of CR2032 batteries at the dollar store for $1.25, so that's often the more cost-effective route.
However, as a rule traditional batteries hold power better over the longer term than rechargeables, and don't drop off as sharply at the bottom end. This would be another reason why coin cells would be preferable in a device like the AirTags. Consumer electronics are normally recharged on a pretty regular basis, so longevity over time isn't an issue. Lithium-ion rechargeable batteries are also more sensitive to things like temperature, which would likely be more relevant for a device like AirTags, where it's important for them to be able to retain power when your keys are sitting outside in a snowbank.
This is part of the reason why a lot of professional equipment in fields like emergency services and audio/video production still use replaceable batteries.