My partner often forgets where she left her iPhone around the house. Until now, we have been using the Find My Device option that lets you play a sound to help locate it. For various reasons, we would like to avoid this.
Given that both of our iPhones have an UWB chip, I figured that it would be quite easy to use the option to get directions to a nearby device, once she shared her location with me (previously she wasn’t sharing her device’s location).
To my surprise, I gather that this is not an option available to us, as both of our phones are not iPhone 15, and only iPhone 15 supports “precision finding”. However, I gather that you can find the precise location of nearby items that have an AirTag attached to them. Does anyone know why it is possible to do this with an AirTag but not with a UWB-equipped iPhone? It seems odd that this option is not available.
But I’m going to say that, in spite of all the hype and technology, Find My is quite disappointing. I can literally be right next to the thing I want to find and my phone has no idea it’s there. Other times it works fine. Usually, when it doesn’t work, if I open or unlock or otherwise smack the device in the face to wake it up, it will show up in Find My, at which point, of course, it’s too late.
I’d be embarrassed to be a find my engineer. They need to fix this crap.
I’ve had similar experiences Dave, but also the opposite, including in one case an iPhone taken from me. I’ve eight AirTags, one in each of my bags, two sets of keys and my wallet, and one hanging off a flashlight when I am on a remote abandoned island a friend lets me have access too. I use Find My daily, I wish the tags were smaller but so glad to have them too. Generally it works, and I tend to blame my aging 11 Pro for when it doesn’t. The antennae in there, I don’t know, my wife’s 11 gets better signal on all radio fronts.
I’m pretty sure I’ve heard that Apple said AirTags were not meant to track people or pets, but we got one to track our cat who likes to wander. Often, before bedtime when it’s dark out, she’s sneaking around the perimeter of the home, or somewhere on our 1/2 acre property. Since the device uses Bluetooth, I would expect to have SOME success with Find My trying to track her down. But it has pretty much never worked, even when I walk the whole property. I can usually see or hear her before she shows up on my screen.
Also: why does it keep complaining that it needs more light? I guess it’s plausible that, in spite of the accellerometer and compass in the iPhone, that it can glean information optically that is lacking in electromagnetic waves. And if adding more light had ever helped me (yes, I’ve wandered around outside in the dark with my iPhone AND a flashlight), I’d be less critical of the technology. But it hasn’t.