Apple is hosting its “Spring Loaded” event tomorrow, in which the long rumors of AirTags could finally be announced. Prior to that, Samsung – which has already launched a competitive SmartThings Find service and two products – claimed how many devices it has on the network and two new features.
In October 2020, Samsung announced SmartThings Find as a way to locate Galaxy phones, tablets, watches and headphones via Bluetooth Low Energy and UWB (ultra-wideband).
The current network now consists of over 70 million “assistant” devices. This is 10% of the 700 million eligible Galaxy users who could participate, with the company calling it “one of the fastest growing location services in the world.” For comparison, Apple last week opened its Find My network to third-party products and promoted “hundreds of millions” of network devices.
Samsung also announced two new features today, starting with a “Search for unknown tags” to detect and list Galaxy SmartTags that don’t belong to you but move next to you. This capability is meant to “ensure that no one is secretly following your location ”.
There is also a new Bixby integration in which you can search for hands-free for named SmartTags. These two features will be released next week and require an updated version of the SmartThings app.
Last week, Samsung officially launched the $ 39 Galaxy SmartTag + with UWB, which allows for a more accurate location and an AR viewfinder. It completes the $ 29 Bluetooth SmartTag, both of which will be announced in January alongside the Galaxy S21 series.
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