Catching up to Apple
Despite Tile dominating the product category since its inception, Apple’s AirTag has made a lot of headway thanks to the addition of augmented reality for finding missing items, safety features to prevent tracking, and the appeal of classic Apple design. Now, Tile is trying its best to keep up by updating several of its trackers and announcing a new flagship.
New and improved Tile Pro
The updated Tile Pro is one of two new flagship products, boasting the longest range of any Tile: 400 feet. It’s also got the loudest ringer for when you’ve misplaced something in a loud room or when it’s being muffled by another item such as a backpack or cushion, for example. It’s available now alongside updated versions of the Tile Sticker, Slim, and Mate.
To keep up with Apple AirTag and Samsung SmartTag, Tile has added a Lost and Found feature that adds a QR code to every device, making it possible for others to scan and lookup your provided contact info.
A long-held critique of trackers is that it makes it easy for abusers to locate victims of domestic abuse. However, the new Scan and Secure feature (available next year) offers a solution that allows you to scan for unknown Tiles nearby that could be used to track you.
Tile Ultra
With an increased range and new safety features like Scan and Secure and Lost and Found, the Tile Pro still doesn’t compare to the Apple AirTag, but Tile has teased an upcoming product — the Tile Ultra — that, like the AirTag, uses both Bluetooth and Ultra-Wideband. The latter is able to narrow down the exact location of an item within an inch or less by measuring the duration of pulses traveling between two devices.
Available on everything
Unlike AirTag and SmartTag, which work with only one operating system, the Tile Ultra works on both iOS and Android devices. Though, it seems it’s optimized for Android 12, with Google saying users will, “benefit from new and accurate positioning experiences.”
For now, that’s all we know about the Tile Ultra. With no design images, and no exact price or date announced yet, it’s still too early to make definite comparisons to the AirTag, but it appears that Tile has found its footing again.