Android’s Bluetooth trackers are finally shipping in late May
Chipolo's trackers. The keychain tracker takes a CR2023 battery; the card is not rechargeable. [credit: Chipolo ]
After an announcement that ended up being a year early, Android's version of Tile/AirTags is ready to launch. Google has been gearing up on the software side of things to enable a Bluetooth tracking network on Android, and the company's two tracking tag hardware partners, Pebblebee and Chipolo, now have ship dates. The two companies each have a press release today, with Pebblebee saying its trackers will ship in "late May," while Chipolo says it will ship "after May 27th." Google has a blog post out, too, promising "additional Bluetooth tags from Eufy, Jio, Motorola and more" later this year.
Both sets of devices have been up for preorder for a year now, and it doesn't seem like anything has changed since. Both companies are offering little Bluetooth trackers in a keychain tag or credit card format, and Pebblebee has a third stick-on tag format. They'll all be anonymously tracked by Android's 3 billion-device Bluetooth tracker network, and the device owner will be able to see them in Google's "Find my device" app.
Chipolo's "One Point" key chain tag is the only thing that takes a CR2032 coin cell battery, while the company's credit card tracker is not rechargeable. Pebblebee's key chain, credit card, and stick-on tracker all have rechargeable batteries, including the wallet card, which is very rare! Nothing has UWB for precise location tracking-everything uses a speaker. Both companies sell multiple SKUs of what look like the exact same product but are locked to Google's or Apple's network-no switching allowed.