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> AirTag is designed for over a year’s worth of battery life with everyday use. The CR2032 battery is user-replaceable and widely available. Replacement batteri
by habibur 6y ago
> AirTag is designed for over a year’s worth of battery life with everyday use. The CR2032 battery is user-replaceable and widely available. Replacement batteries are sold separately.
That's the piece of information I wanted to know first. Devices like this can be built, but those can't run on batteries for a reasonable time frame.
Apple made it practical.
- suprfsat 6y agoTile's been doing one-year battery life with a CR2032 for quite some time now.
- eigen 6y agoonly the $35 Tile Pro has user-replaceable 2032 battery.
- JohnTHaller 6y agoThat's incorrect. The lower-tier Tile Mate has a 1 year user-replaceable CR1632 battery. The Tile Mate is only $62 for a 4-pack compared to $89.99 for a 4-pack of Tile Pros or $99 for a 4-pack of AirTags. User-replaceable 1 year batteries have been the norm for a while as both the Mate and Pro were introduced 2.5 years ago.
- cptskippy 6y agoOnly in the Tile Mate and Pro since 2018 models. Their other tiles do not have user replaceable batteries.
- dqpb 6y agoI had a tile, battery died, won’t buy again.
- tyingq 6y agoDidn't expect user replaceable commodity batteries from Apple. That's nice.
- gerry_shaw 6y agoIt is ridiculous that something as basic as having a user replaceable battery is considered an unexpected nice feature.
- alephnan 6y agoSome Tile models don't have replaceable batteries either. There's a tradeoff in form factor
- avipars 6y agoactually not much in mine... maybe in the tile slim ones though
- trissylegs 6y agoThe one on my keys is. The one in my wallet isn't. I suppose because there's not standard "Very thin" battery. Button batteries are the limit.
- spoonjim 6y agoFor something where extremely small size is an essential feature (unlike a laptop computer), battery replaceability is a direct trade off with that.
- tekknik 6y ago> For something where extremely small size is an essential feature (unlike a laptop computer) Say that to someone traveling for work.
- spoonjim 6y agoI traveled a lot for work and always carried a replaceable battery computer and two extra batteries. Battery life was lower back then though.
- ehsankia 6y agoAs pointed out above, this is already the status quo (replacable battery, 1 year life, etc). Tile has had it for years. I'm curious if it would've been technically feasible to have wireless charging on these instead of replaceable battery. Or would that greatly increase the price?
- dijit 6y ago> Tile has had it for years. I had a tile and it most assuredly did not have a replacable battery, I had to mill the thing open: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrhM5ujSU6w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrhM5ujSU6w
- Me1000 6y agoYeah, I had to check their website... it looks like some of the their models have replaceable batteries now, but they certainly didn't start that way (and not all of their products have a replaceable battery today).
- ehsankia 6y agoNever claimed it started this way, but they've had replaceable models for ~3 years now, if not longer.
- spoonjim 6y agoTile has products with replaceable and with non replaceable batteries.
- natch 6y agoYes now they do. For years they had only non-user-replaceable ones but they were happy to charge a large fee for a swap.
- KingOfCoders 6y ago"Now" like in the last 3+ years.
- vagrantJin 6y ago> Apple made it practical. Ofcourse. User replaceable battery sold seperately made practical by Apple Inc.
- bsharitt 6y agoI'm super surprised and pleased by this. I would have expected these to have recharge lithium ion batteries that weren't replaceable.
- munk-a 6y agoI'm actually rather disappointed that it isn't using a passive RFID chip and multiple base stations to triangulate item location - that would probably bring the price for the actual tags down to something stupidly cheap.
- Toutouxc 6y agoIs this actually doable? I always thought RFID is unusable at those distances.
- Nextgrid 6y agoRFID does work with base stations - I believe some toll roads use them. It's however impossible to deploy these at the scale necessary to make these tags work - the range is so short you'd need them every few meters.
- adrusi 6y agoNo. I looked into this pretty extensively a few years ago. Ideally you could use semi-passive RFID, which only broadcasts a signal when its identifying signal is detected. But these still need a power source, and batteries are not cheap, only get so small, and don't hold a charge forever, so I don't think you can get the cost per tag for comsumers in such a system much below $10. At that point, I think making them $25 and having them broadcast every 30 seconds so that they can be found anywhere in the world if someone walks by them with an iPhone is an obviously better solution. Of course there are wacky solutions, such as using autonomous drones as mobile base stations to find fully passive RFID tags as a home inventory solution. But that introduces a whole host of issues.
- kemonocode 6y agoThey probably caught enough flak with how incredibly unserviceable AirPods were and decided not to repeat the same mistake, especially here where it wouldn't give any benefit at all. Kind of a no-brainer, but you never know with Apple...
- adamlett 6y agoLol, what flak? AirPods are to a close approximation loved by all reviewers and by all evidence they are a smash hit among consumers.
- calvinmorrison 6y agoI got knock off ones. Yeah, they nice. I lost them in about 3 weeks. First one bud, then the other. Shame but I'm 5 years into my Bose over ears and I don't think I'll lose them.
- ghaff 6y agoOver ears are pretty much a non-starter for a lot of people who travel.
- kelnos 6y agoMany of the people I know who travel a lot will only use over-ear headphones, as even the best in-ear and earbud headphones can get pretty uncomfortable with the pressure changes that happen on an airplane. I have a fairly good set of in-ear 'phones that I can wear pretty much indefinitely on the ground, but I usually can't get keep them in for more than a couple hours while I'm on a plane. I've tried using different tips for them while on a plane, but nothing works.
- occz 6y agoHow come? I've been traveling extensively with over-ears, what makes them a non-starter?
- avipars 6y agoI'm happy that it's user-replaceable ... $100 for 4 of them sets you back a good amount... especially if you would have otherwise had to toss them after their internal batteries died
- kelnos 6y agoGiven that the target market is "Apple customers", I don't think $25/year/device is much of a burden. Regardless, though, I don't like the idea of a device that's designed to be landfilled every year; replaceable batteries are the right way to go here.
- adrusi 6y ago$100/4 isn't going to be a burden for most apple customers if they're just putting them on their keys, wallets, handbags, etc. But the endgame for these sorts of devices is longer lifetimes and slapping them on everything you might conceivable care about losing, which will only become practical once they hit prices below $1. Maybe something based on semi-passive RFID?
- ghaff 6y agoFor something that I hopefully won't really need on a regular basis, I'd hesitate to buy something that was essentially a $25 annual subscription.
- Sohcahtoa82 6y agoGod damn it's like I'm back in 2010 where people praise Apple for doing things other people have already done. Apple did not invent device trackers with replaceable batteries. Tile has been doing that since 2018 on some of their devices (Basically all except the smallest ones), and I imagine someone else did it before then.
- obenn 6y agoTrackers have existed for a while, but the privacy preserving ad-hoc device network approach is definitely an innovation.
- redxdev 6y agoIs it though? Tile seems to do the exact same thing according to https://www.thetileapp.com/en-us/how-it-works https://www.thetileapp.com/en-us/how-it-works (see "Notify When Found") I don't have one so I can't conclusively say either way, but it seems like the only "innovation" Apple can probably claim over Tile is that every iPhone should support the network out of the box (I assume) rather than having to rely only on people who already have the app.
- tekknik 6y agoTile charges for that feature, and harasses you in app until you pay the sub. Tiles only works with phones, any apple device supporting the “find my” protocol can report the position of a tag. Integration into the Apple ecosystem is another huge one that Tile refused.
- mvanaltvorst 6y agoThe fact that it works with any iPhone /is/ the innovation. I would imagine less than 0,5% of iPhone users has the Tile app installed. A worldwide network of connected iPhones will make this technology finally worth using.
- imwillofficial 6y ago“Where people praise App for things other people have already done.” Did anyone say Apple was the first to do this? No, no they did not. So are you saying that nobody is allowed to be praised if it’s been done before? Because that’s what it looks like to me, please correct me if I’m mistaken. Thanks.
- dheera 6y agoWhy can't they just have it recharge with a tiny solar cell or kinetic charging? Any object moved around by normal use would generate more than enough energy to charge a CR2032's worth in an entire year. That would make it truly practical by never needing a battery change. Apple didn't make anything significantly better than the Tile IMO, which also needs batteries to be replaced every year.
- rkangel 6y agoThe Apple one wins in one simple way - they already have a billion iPhones to find lost tags. The Tile network is nowhere near as big.
- calsy 6y agoIn Australia roughly 20 kids per week present to emergency having swallowed or inserted a button battery and in several cases many have tragically died. It is an agonising death over a period of days/weeks for the child and horrible for the parents to witness. Many times both the parents and medical professionals don't realise what is actually happening to the child until it is too late. There is growing support for much tighter regulations of these batteries and limiting there use overall. Apple is certainly not the only company who are using them, not by a long shot. But they are not some holy grail of replaceable batteries and it surprising Apple would decide to use them now. If you are interested ABC in Australia did a rather big report into the increasing incidents of button battery related deaths and injuries, telling the story of families who's lives were turned upside down by them. It is incredibly difficult reading. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-15/button-batteries-landmines-in-the-loungeroom/13041928 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-15/button-batteries-land...
- hackama 6y agoCR2032 is 2cm wide so you're probably referring to smaller batteries as these cannot be swallowed by a child.
- calsy 6y agoThe link in my post shows the damage a CR2032 button does when swallowed.
- ghaff 6y agoI imagine smaller diameter batteries are a bigger issue but apparently the concerns are for this class of batteries in general. [1] That said, I don't see a call for banning them but just for being aware of the potential danger. (Although another link in this thread does seem to actively discourage using them.) [1] https://www.kidsafevic.com.au/product-safety/button-batteries/ https://www.kidsafevic.com.au/product-safety/button-batterie...
- calsy 6y agoYes there is, that ABC article is especially painful to read. The number of parents holding pictures of these kids most no older than 4 who have died from these batteries. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-15/button-batteries-landmines-in-the-loungeroom/13041928?nw=0 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-15/button-batteries-land... https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/accc-welcomes-safety-and-information-standards-for-button-batteries https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/accc-welcomes-safety-a...
- pupdogg 6y agoIf you’re not intimidated by NDAs, devices like this can be built for approx. $15/ea. or less (based on your volume) with a battery option. A CR2032 will yield approx. 6-7 years of life for the tag as long as it’s setup to emit once every 30-60s. I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple’s cost is in $1-2 per device with the battery.
- compiler-guy 6y agoHome brew are fun and handy, and very useful if you tend to lose things in known locations like your own home. I have been using my own for years. The disadvantage is that homebrew don’t get the network effects of a bunch of users who just happen to pass by when you dropped it in the park. So the trade off is real and depends on how and when you tend to lose things.
- lozaning 6y agoI worked on the samsung version that also recently launched, the scale at which we could find things was staggering. Nothing in the world is really ever that far from a Samsung smartphone anymore.
- jbverschoor 6y agoYou can buy complete bluetooth beacons including battery for under $7 in the EU. They can easily be built for a few bucks. Good profits, and I expect many people will have 5-10 devices, because they're so cheap
- ghaff 6y agoI played with some BLE beacons a few years back. I honestly didn't find them very useful for finding things--though that was probably some older Bluetooth version.
- jbverschoor 6y agoThe trick is of course the locating network, and UHF, but it's essentially the same hardware
- GurnBlandston 6y agoThat's comparable to existing products. I was hoping to read that Apple made the device sealed and rechargeable via a mat or the like. This device will be used like find my phone - a removable battery will make it trivial for thieves to disable the tracking.
- _jal 6y agoThe use case is very much not theft tracking, and they will not work for that. "An AirTag that has been separated from its owner for a long period of time will make an audible noise when it’s moved, as part of a privacy feature to let you know there’s a tag present." https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/04/20/moren-fine-print https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/04/20/moren-fine-prin...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- radicaldreamer 6y agoThey will work if you leave one in a car that you drive often enough, however…
- daamsie 6y agoI think the main use case would be for misplaced items more so than stolen ones.
- oivey 6y agoEven easier than removing the tag: thieves could just remove the tag from the object.
- natch 6y agoThis is what turned me against Tile as a consumer. For the longest time they refused to provide any way for the end user to replace a battery, choosing instead to charge for something like a “recycling fee” which essentially matched the new normally discounted purchase price. Yes the batteries are replaceable now, for some models, but I even declined to interview there a couple times based on the obtuseness of this product decision. And partnering with HP... not my idea of cool.
- reportgunner 6y agoSo if the battery is replaceable I can simply remove the battery to disable the AirTag once I steal the item it is "tracking" ?
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoYes, but it's not a security / theft protection device so idk what the chortling is about.
- mvanaltvorst 6y agoYou could also remove the whole AirTag?