Bluetooth trackers are helpful, however for scenarios the place you wish to have exact location monitoring—like should you lose your keys within your own home and don’t wish to play conceal and search with the tracker’s alert sounds—Extremely Wideband (UWB) involves the rescue.
It’s a era present in AirTags and a few different trackers that a great deal improves monitoring precision, however there’s a catch. In case you’re on Android, likelihood is that your telephone doesn’t beef up UWB within the first position, and despite the fact that it does, you’re restricted to only some UWB trackers. As issues stand now, that most probably gained’t make stronger anytime quickly, which is a disgrace.
What is UWB?
Extremely-precise monitoring
Extremely Wideband (UWB) isn’t a brand new era, nevertheless it got here into center of attention for the overall tech target audience when Apple launched the iPhone 11. A couple of years later, the corporate introduced the primary technology of AirTags with UWB beef up on make a choice gadgets.
Not like Bluetooth, UWB provides very exact location monitoring, often referred to as Precision Discovering. The caveat is that the tech best works over quick distances, however due to greater than 1.5 billion gadgets which are a part of Apple’s To find My community, an AirTag can use Bluetooth to broadcast its location to close by Apple gadgets after which, while you’re close by, use UWB that will help you find it with precision measured in inches.
Apart from very good precision, UWB too can decide the attitude from which the incoming sign is arriving, permitting monitoring apps to make use of an arrow to indicate you towards the tracker and the object it’s hooked up to.
Combining Bluetooth and UWB with close by gadgets which are a part of networks like Apple’s To find My and Google’s To find Hub may just create without equal tracker, which the AirTag kind of already is. However even with out the broader monitoring community, having a UWB tracker is superb when you wish to have to seek out your pockets or keys which are misplaced someplace in your house. Sadly, UWB beef up on Android remains to be very deficient.
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The Moto Tag is a UWB-equipped Bluetooth tracker able to managing your valuables, discovering your telephone, or even performing as a photograph faraway.
UWB beef up on Android is lackluster
And it will most probably keep that method
There are more than one the reason why UWB isn’t in reality a factor on Android. Not like Apple, which controls each {hardware} and tool, the Android ecosystem is a lot more fragmented. Telephone producers make a decision whether or not they’ll equip their telephones with UWB, Google comes to a decision whether or not it’ll beef up it on To find Hub, and tracker producers additionally must equip their gadgets with UWB.
The primary stumbling block is the restricted selection of Android telephones that pack UWB. Whilst Google has geared up its Pixel telephones with UWB beginning with the Pixel 6 Professional, it best comprises UWB on Professional and Professional XL fashions, leaving common Pixel and Pixel a telephones out. Worse nonetheless, even if they beef up UWB, Google has no plans to permit Precision Discovering at the Pixel 6 Professional and Pixel 7 Professional, with the characteristic best supported at the Pixel 8 Professional and more recent gadgets.
Samsung is doing one thing equivalent, with UWB best discovered on Galaxy S Plus and Extremely fashions, with even the $900 base Galaxy S26 overlooked to dry. Different Android manufacturers are even worse. No longer counting Pixel Professionals and Galaxy S telephones, just a handful of Android telephones beef up UWB, and this most probably gained’t alternate anytime quickly.
Then you definitely’ve were given the dirt-poor Android UWB tracker marketplace. The one UWB Android trackers that paintings throughout gadgets with UWB Precision Discovering beef up are the Moto Tag and the Moto Tag 2. Whilst you’ll be able to make Galaxy SmartTag trackers, which beef up UWB Precision Discovering, paintings on non-Samsung gadgets with an app akin to uTag, they formally best paintings with Samsung Galaxy telephones, and their UWB options are restricted to Galaxy telephones with UWB beef up.
So as to add insult to damage, SmartTags don’t paintings with Google’s To find Hub and are restricted to Samsung’s SmartThings community. In different phrases, if you do not personal a UWB-equipped Samsung telephone, you’re successfully restricted to simply two UWB tracker choices on Android: the Moto Tag and the Moto Tag 2. As for To find Hub UWB beef up, Google’s app does beef up it, nevertheless it best added beef up in mid-2025, that means you couldn’t correctly use UWB on Android despite the fact that you had the fitting telephone and a Moto Tag till reasonably lately.
The deficient UWB implementation on Android most probably gained’t make stronger as a result of there’s a narrow probability extra Android manufacturers will get started equipping their telephones with UWB, and Samsung and Google are not likely to convey it to their extra reasonably priced handsets.
To make issues worse, Apple doesn’t permit third-party trackers get admission to to UWB Precision Discovering on iPhones, that means third-party tracker producers have little incentive so as to add UWB to their merchandise. What’s the purpose of together with UWB when the marketplace would include only some Android telephones?
The outcome is that almost all Android customers are caught with Bluetooth trackers, and if you wish to use UWB on Android, your best selection are Moto Tag trackers, or a SmartTag should you personal a high-end Samsung telephone.
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The Samsung Galaxy SmartTag 2 is the tracker to get should you personal a Samsung Galaxy telephone with UWB beef up.
Bluetooth 6.0 may just remedy the problem of exact monitoring on Android
However best on new telephones
A silver lining here’s a Bluetooth 6.0 characteristic referred to as Channel Sounding. Like UWB, Channel Sounding permits Bluetooth gadgets to beef up exact monitoring that comes with each distance and course. Its accuracy is claimed to be related to UWB, with accuracy ranges of +/- 20 cm. Higher nonetheless, Android has supported Channel Sounding since Android 15.
There are a couple of caveats, in fact. There are just a handful of Bluetooth 6.0 trackers, such because the Chipolo POP and LOOP, however they nonetheless don’t absolutely put in force Channel Sounding as of this writing. Subsequent, you wish to have a telephone with Bluetooth 6.0 to make use of Channel Sounding, restricting you to lately launched high-end Android telephones, with some pricey fashions, akin to the bottom Galaxy S26, nonetheless caught on older Bluetooth variations.
It’s extremely most probably that Bluetooth 6.0 and Channel Sounding will in the end convey UWB-like advantages to Android, nevertheless it seems like we’ll have to attend a couple of extra years for that to occur.
UWB is a brilliant tech, and it is a disgrace it isn’t higher supported on Android
UWB is a brilliant era. It sips energy, and its excessive accuracy and direction-based location monitoring were recreation changers, as confirmed through the good fortune of the AirTag. However on Android, the entirety issues towards UWB by no means in reality turning into a factor, with each Google and Android telephone manufacturers sharing a part of the blame.
A minimum of there’s Bluetooth 6.0’s Channel Sounding, however even that can take a couple of years to take off, since Bluetooth 6.0 trackers nonetheless aren’t broadly enforcing the characteristic, and just a handful of Android gadgets recently beef up Bluetooth 6.0. On the finish of the day, it seems like precision monitoring will keep out of achieve for many Android customers till Bluetooth 6.0 turns into mainstream.
