I got a few as a gift. They kinda worked, but broadcast all your location info to the cloud. Then after some period of time under a year, the batteries went dead and that was the end of them. At the time, replacements were something like $20 or $25, lol no.
I agree that it would be nice if they didn't broadcast (in fact, when I learned how they worked was the day I stopped using the tile I got as a gift and foolishly used without researching).
However, as I understand it, there isn't currently a better way to do it. My understanding (and I have zero bluetooth dev experience, so this is all 2nd hand...thus I welcome additional input) is that, to give maximum battery life, they use the bluetooth low energy spec. A consequence of the way this works is that the dev
And I guess I should clarify...I certainly understand that the app itself could choose not to send to the cloud a list of what devices it sees. Clearly that would not violate the bluetooth spec (though it would negate part of Tiles selling point of other people being able to locate your lost device). But still, the device itself is visible to others around you listening to the BLE frequencies. So even if Tile let you turn off your app from sending to the cloud, it wouldn't stop other users with that setting on from seeing and uploading your location (and I suppose Tile could let you flag your device and promise to not store your data, but of course nobody is going to trust that, so it's kinda pointless to even offer it).
Tiles suck though (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
I agree that it would be nice if they didn't broadcast (in fact, when I learned how they worked was the day I stopped using the tile I got as a gift and foolishly used without researching).
However, as I understand it, there isn't currently a better way to do it. My understanding (and I have zero bluetooth dev experience, so this is all 2nd hand...thus I welcome additional input) is that, to give maximum battery life, they use the bluetooth low energy spec. A consequence of the way this works is that the dev
Re:Tiles suck though (Score:2)
And I guess I should clarify...I certainly understand that the app itself could choose not to send to the cloud a list of what devices it sees. Clearly that would not violate the bluetooth spec (though it would negate part of Tiles selling point of other people being able to locate your lost device). But still, the device itself is visible to others around you listening to the BLE frequencies. So even if Tile let you turn off your app from sending to the cloud, it wouldn't stop other users with that setting on from seeing and uploading your location (and I suppose Tile could let you flag your device and promise to not store your data, but of course nobody is going to trust that, so it's kinda pointless to even offer it).