631–640 of 966 posts
I wouldn't have expected that of Apple considering other popular options don't allow battery replacement. That always bothered me for the product waste.
What popular options don't allow battery replacement? Tile and Samsung SmartTags have battery replacement... Are you referring to some other beacon tracker that's more popular that I have never heard of?
Did Apple just kill this business with their own product? https://chipolo.net/
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This seems like a problematic situation. In a vacuum I can see how they want to mitigate the stalking risks, but as of right now, unless you have a recently updated Apple device then, then you're completely ignored by the stalking mitigations. There's nothing official from Apple on the Google Play store that would mitigate that situation as well. This just seems like a low barrier to entry stalking tool on the extrem…
I presume the location info is only collected if its marked as "lost" - at which point if the tag connects to apples network via someones phone, it'll prompt them. If its marked "lost" and sending location with no iphone nearby and is moved it beeps. The stalking potential is greatly reduced if the victim has an android as the location will only be sent when its detected by an iphone.
If the stalkee has an android they will never know. Their position will be snitched by every iDevice they come near.
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you forgot something, low-cost, low-power, low-accuracy battery monitoring is like pretty much the most solved problem ever. low-cost & low-power & high accuracy, not so much
What do you mean? It's literally just a 2-axis lookup table with voltage on one axis and SOC on the other.
Now most devices use direct voltage, coloumb counting and battery impedance to keep track, and that’s with known batteries.
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Phone batteries stopped being user replaceable once smart phones started improving at such a rapid pace that even if you could replace the battery in your 2 year old device you won’t want to because the UI would be dog slow and the camera a blurry mess compared to current model. Funnily, the time for replaceable batteries in phones seems to have arrived, but users are now trained not to expect it. Sending your phone…
I did like having two batteries and an external charger. 30 seconds I’m out the door with a freshy
Because the obvious issue is that most people won’t.
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If 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.
Home 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.
> 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.
As 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?