What if you lost your keys in-between your couch cushions last night and now you’re late for work? What if you could pull out your phone and wander around your house to track where the keys were, or even better, how many times have you wished that your lost keys or wallet could call out to you when you lose them? Meet Tile: a nifty little gizmo to counter your stuff getting lost.
Tile sounds pretty simple: attach a Tile to your laptop, your keys, your wallet or even your bike and have it communicate via Bluetooth 4.0 with your iPhone to indicate distance and help you find stuff when it gets lost. Why didn’t we think of this, right?
It’s especially interesting when your Tile-tagged stuff gets stolen. Each Tile is marked with what it was attached to on the phone app, and if your bike gets stolen for example, you can mark the Tile as Lost. That then flags the Tile in the back-end, and if any Tile user goes near your lost Tile, it discreetly communicates with the back-end that it has been found. Then your app gets notified that some kind stranger has passed by your lost item, and marks it on a map for you. That’s seriously nifty, but it’s all going to depend on the range of Bluetooth 4.0, which Tile says is up to 150 feet.
Tile runs on Bluetooth 4.0, which means no Android support just yet. Sorry Googlers. Another weird pseudo-flaw with Tile is the battery situation. The Tile doesn’t need to be recharged. It’s a set and forget system, but it does only have a battery life of a year, which means you’ll need to keep buying new Tiles every year to keep using the system. That’s an interesting new take on a subscription model.
Right now Tile is available for pre-order, shipping in late 2013. You can still order a Tile for as little as $US18.95, or you can get multi-packs ranging up to 10 Tiles for $US170.55. Take my money! [Tile]