Air tags?

knightstyle

Do they work in remote areas with no mobile network coverage?

Paulrn

if you mean Apple air tags they rely on other apple devices near by so basically the less people with iPhones around the more useless they are. If it’s for say a dog a proper tracker like Pawfit us the answer.

flaneurs_lobster

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6653029/air-tags

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81863211#Comment_81863211

How does a "proper tracker like Pawfit", which uses 4G to report its location, work when there's no mobile network coverage?

Paulrn

I know it’s not the wilds of Scotland but it has never failed in the whole of the new forest

flaneurs_lobster

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81863409#Comment_81863409

Ergo, the whole of the New Forest has mobile coverage.

OP's question was about use of trackers where there is no mobile coverage.

Grumpy_chap

My initial thought on this was to give a short answer in the negative.

Having thought about it, I wonder whether Apple Air-Tags are more sophisticated than that.

• An Air-Tag will ping to any Apple phone within range.
• The location of those Apple phones is what then gives the location of the Air-Tag. It is not the Air-Tag that directly communicates the location. AIUI, the Apple phones use the "find my" feature to pass on the Air-Tag locations.
• The Apple phones could have location as per mobile signal and triangulation from local masts.
• The Apple phones could also have location from WIFI services or from GPS. (I can't imagine there being many cases that a phone would have location via WIFI but so remote as to have no mobile network coverage.)
• So long as there are multiple Apple phones in the area, one imagines that all mobile networks would be covered so, again, fewer locations where there is no network at all.
• I am unsure as to whether the "find my" feature which flags the Air-Tag locations uses only the subscribers network or uses any network?
• Even if the Air-Tag pinged an Apple phone in a location where there is no mobile signal from any network, no GPS and no WIFI, would the phone still record the ping? If so, would the phone provide a location status update for the Air-Tag as soon as the phone came back into a signal area?

Let's consider that I have gone trekking in the Knoydart Peninsula and get trapped fallen down a ravine and there is no signal of any kind but I attached an Air-Tag to my jacket as a last-line of defence. Three other walkers pass during the day and, while they do not see me, each of their Apple phones records my Air-Tag. Walker one gets back to their accommodation in Inverie, walker two returns to the AirBNB in Airor, and the third walker makes for the night in Barrisdale. On arrival back to the respective accommodations, each of the Apple phones communicates a location of the Air-Tag (at the three separate places). While not wonderful, this gives emergency services a potential opportunity to triangulate and narrow the search area and, if the three walkers can advise their routes, might still allow a relatively narrow search area to be defined.

Is that a long winded way of saying it may be more complicated?

Vitor

AFIAK there is no store-and-forward behaviour in the way you are imagining. If an iPhone is pinged on Bluetooth by an AirTag while completely offline, the detection may be transiently cached, but Find My reports are not reliably queued for later upload with preserved location context.

NB The latest iPhones can connect to low-orbit satellites but only for manually initiated SOS. They don't, as yet, fall back to sending general IP traffic up to SPAAACE

atlantis187

Dont waste your money not much difference between apple one and cheap chinese ones as they both us Findmy app - I have tested both

Doshwaster

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81865691#Comment_81865691

I got some cheap UGREEN ones off Amazon recently and they work fine. Just be careful that there are different models for iPhone and Android.

missile

I have one in my car. Just in case :-)

MyRealNameToo

The new AirTags have a better precise location capability than the older ones but if thats worth paying a premium for is another question. Generally when losing things tend to use the sound to locate the item more than the screen saying its 1.5m to my left though on one occasion the sound was disorienting and really struggled to find it. Third party tags similarly won't work with the precise location feature… typically of apple they open up their ecosystem to allow others to play but keep some elements back for their own use.

Did used to use a non-compatible tag from before the days of AirTag but it wasnt great because only phones with their app installed and set to run in the background would detect them. Lost keys in central London and it never pinged.