If you’ve been wondering how Android’s new Find My Device trackers stack up against Apple’s AirTags, we’ve just done an unofficial but revealing comparison that gave us a handy look at how they compare in the real world.
In a Reddit thread posted by u/chiselplow (via 9to5Google), a Pebblebee tracker for Google’s Find My Device network, and an AirTag were both put in a mailbox and sent to another state to be checked on.
The tracking results are far from conclusive since this was a one-off test, but they do suggest that it’s still early days for Google’s new Find My Device network (which was updated in May) compared to Apple’s more established Find My equivalent (which launched in 2019).
The trackers on both networks work by using an anonymous, crowdsourced network of nearby smartphones – Android phones for Find My Device, iPhones for Apple’s Find My – to find their location. However, when the Pebblebee and AirTag were collected by the mailman in this particular side-by-side test, there was a striking difference in their tracking.
According to u/chiselplow, it took 11 hours for the Pebblebee tracker to ping its new location, while the AirTag continuously updated its location throughout the day. Unfortunately, the Find My Device tracker lost its new location the next day at a sorting center and defaulted to its previous location at the sender’s home. This is not exactly helpful.
This continued until the package reached its destination and was returned to sender. Other issues with the Find My Device tracker included a lack of detail in the app’s maps (compared to satellite mode with Apple’s Map for AirTags) and the complete absence of the Pebblebee tracker from the web browser version of Google’s tracking network.
While no big conclusions can be drawn from a one-off test, especially since it was conducted in the iPhone-dominant US, it’s fair to say that it’s still early days for the Find My Device network. Google admitted in June that it was “actively rolling out improvements” to some early teething issues.
Some of those issues are arguably related to Google’s chosen default settings for its Find My Device network. While Android phones automatically join the network, the default setting is “high traffic areas only.” Google’s advice to improve the experience with third-party trackers like Pebblebee was to change the setting to “all areas” to “improve the network’s ability to find your lost items in low-traffic areas.”
Time to find herself
It’s clear that Google’s Find My Device network is intended to compete with, and eventually surpass, Apple’s Find My equivalent for AirTags. But this experiment shows that there’s still a lot of work to be done.
That’s understandable, given Google’s new network launched less than two months ago. But there’s clearly room for improvement in terms of implementation, despite the fact that devices going all the way back to Android 9 are compatible with the network.
This gives Find My Device, as Google claimed at launch, a “crowdsourced network of over a billion Android devices,” which on paper could ultimately make it more powerful than Apple’s Find My.
Currently, however, it’s missing features like UWB (ultra-wideband) support, which would help support the handy ‘Precision Finding’ search functionality on AirTags. And the Find My Device rollout is still in full swing, meaning trackers like those from Pebblebee and Chipolo may not be quite up to AirTags’ level yet.
Another feature we’ve been hoping for is a Google AirTags equivalent made by the tech giant itself – something that was rumored before the network even launched. Hopefully we’ll hear about that, and an update on the Find My Device rollout, during the Pixel 9 event on August 13.