Tile Gen 2

We first heard about Tile way back in June 2013. It turned out to be a very successful crowdfunded project, raking in $2.5m from thousands of people wanting a way to keep track of their precious items. We finally received one in July 2014 and now have the updated second-generation version. These include a speaker that’s three times louder at 90 decibels. Previously, it was too quiet to hear if there was even moderate ambient noise. Plus, you can now use the Tile to find your phone.

The first thing you’ll notice about the Tile is that it’s larger than you probably thought it would be. We did, at any rate. It’s not too big to attach to a key ring, but at around 5.5mm it’s twice the thickness of an average key and wider than most car key fobs.

Unlike at launch there’s now an Android app, which requires Android 4.4 or later. You can use a Tile only with an iPhone or iPad – one that has Bluetooth 4.0 low energy.

The app is free, and it’s easy to pair the Tile: you press the ‘e’ and it plays a short tune to let you know that it’s in pairing mode.

It then works much like the Find My iPhone app in that you can see when the Tile was last ‘seen’ – or in Bluetooth contact with your iPhone or iPad – and a map of its location.

If you were to lose the object that the Tile is attached to, you can go to its last known location and start searching. Bluetooth 4.0 LE’s range is bigger than you might think at up to 150 feet, so you don’t have to be right on top of the Tile before the app can connect to it.

Until it’s in range, the app will show ‘Out of range’, but when it connects, a green Find button appears. This causes the tile to play a Donkey Kong-style tune. In a quiet house you’ll track it down easily, but it’s a harder prospect if you’ve lost it near a busy road.

It’s still not obvious in the current version of the app that you can tap the Tile icon inside the green circle to display a distance gauge. The segments fill up as you get closer to the tag, but there’s no indication which direction to go.

If you return to the place the Tile was last seen and you’re still out of range, there is another way to find it, though this relies on other Tile users. It’s called Community Find, and it’s a clever system. Whenever the Tile app is running on anyone’s phone or tablet, it logs the location of any other Tiles that it detects.

You wouldn’t know that, as no information is shown apart from the location of your own Tiles (you can have up to eight of your own connected to the app). However, should any of those other Tile owners lose theirs and your app picks up the location, it will be shown in their app even though there was no Bluetooth connection.

There are some stumbling blocks here. One is the user base. Until lots of people who live and work near you own Tiles, you won’t be able to use Community Find. .

Battery life is still an issue. It lasts roughly a year, and isn’t user replaceable. This is because the case is sealed to make it splash proof. Basically this makes it more like a subscription service. We’d far rather the option to replace the battery and trade off waterproofing.

Tile has also increased in price slightly, but it’s the cost of shipping to the UK that’s the problem. Last year a Tile cost $20 with $14 delivery. Now it’s $25, plus $21. That’s around £30. However, if you buy a pack of four (currently $70) this works out as £60 including delivery, so that’s half price. It’s still more expensive than the £11.50 cost when you bought three last year, but not bad if you need all four or can split it with a friend.

As we mentioned at the start, there’s a new feature in the second-gen version: find my phone. This is a bit more convenient than Apple’s and Google’s systems as you can press the ‘e’ on your Tile and your phone will play a loud tune even if it’s on silent.

Verdict

As Tile admits, small tracking devices are nothing new. What’s different is that it uses Bluetooth. If you’re the sort of person who’s always losing their keys around the house, Tile is ideal.