Researchers Find Apple AirTag, Samsung SmartTag2 Superior in Tracking Accuracy

The researchers over at 9to5Google shipped different trackers from United Kingdom to United States to find out which tracking networks are best in finding lost things. The researchers used different trackers like Pebblebee Clip, Samsung SmartTag2, Chipolo One Point and Apple Air Tag and tracked them on their respective networks. Apple Air Tag was tracked on Apple Find My, Samsung Tag2 was tracked on Samsung’s SmartThings and Pebblebee Clip and Chipolo were tracked on Google’s Find My Device. All the trackers were placed in one package and shipped away.

In the first 24 hours, Samsung SmartTag2 and Apple AirTag were quickly located 200 miles away from the original shipping location. Chipolo and Pebblebee were still showing their location at a postal storage. This may be because of the slow expansion of Find My Device in the UK. After almost 40 hours, these two were also located via Find My Device. After some time, all four trackers were listed as arriving in the USA at Newark International Airport. Even though there were some differences in the location of all trackers, they were still within a 100 meter radius of each other.

Image: 9to5G

After 72 hours, trackers were tracked at John F. Kennedy Airport but with less pronounced location discrepancies. AirTag was giving frequent location updates than other trackers while SmartTag2 was giving updates on a regular basis. Chipolo and Pebblebee were not getting updated that much. All the trackers were located within a few meters of each other. Now they had to be moved to different locations and AirTag and SmartTag2 were handling it well by frequently updating the location. But Chipolo and Pebblebee were still stuck in the location they were earlier in the day. The distance from their current location to the location they were stuck at was about 80 miles, showing how inaccurate Google’s network was.

On day five, almost 120 hours later, all trackers except Pebblebee showed an accurate final destination, Syracuse, New York. But Pebblebee was showing its location 30 miles away from the final destination. Even after refreshing several times, Pebblebee didn't change its location even though it was connected to the same account as Chipolo.

Even when the trackers were shipped to the true final destination, AirTag was quick with updates about location every 5-10 minutes. SmartTag2 was also doing well but Android’s Find My Device was less regular with its updates. The updates were coming every few hours. It is still good enough to have an idea about where you left something.

The results showed that Apple’s AirTag is a good tracker, along with Samsungs’s SmartTag2. But the same cannot be said about Google’s Find My Device. AirTag is good in the USA because of the large number of iPhone users there. Google’s default settings make it difficult to find a tracker in high traffic network areas but it can help you in getting an idea about where you left something.



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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World