Charging electronics to manage a battery are complex and life of a LiPO battery is reduced by heat etc longer than those coin batteries which are designed for very low very long life, like watches. This is better than having to recharge it every 2-4 weeks. Those batteries are inexpensive and having a dozen around for the month when your tags start dying isnâ(TM)t going to be that much a PITA. A charger would have been better for convenience if the life was the same.
They already thought of the potential for stalking. Your phone will notify you if it sees an AirTag traveling with you but that belongs to someone else who's not nearby. It'll even help you find it by chirping.
That's a good anti-stalking measure, but it's not ideal for other use cases. I wanted to put these on my cargo trailer, boat trailer, and my four-wheeler because those kinds of things tend to get stolen a lot. If the tag is going to let the bad guys know they're being tracked then that's kinda besides
It's more than that. It will report its position using any internet connected Apple Device, not just your own. The security around this is actually pretty clever, in so much that the relaying device has no way of knowing who owns a device it's reporting, but never the less, it's not just when it's within Bluetooth range of your own phone.
An Apple device with a user-replaceable battery? How did they overlook that mistake?
They already thought of the potential for stalking. Your phone will notify you if it sees an AirTag traveling with you but that belongs to someone else who's not nearby. It'll even help you find it by chirping.
That's a good anti-stalking measure, but it's not ideal for other use cases. I wanted to put these on my cargo trailer, boat trailer, and my four-wheeler because those kinds of things tend to get stolen a lot. If the tag is going to let the bad guys know they're being tracked then that's kinda besides
It's more than that. It will report its position using any internet connected Apple Device, not just your own. The security around this is actually pretty clever, in so much that the relaying device has no way of knowing who owns a device it's reporting, but never the less, it's not just when it's within Bluetooth range of your own phone.
New in the Bluetooth 5.1 standard, from wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
Angle of Arrival (AoA) and Angle of Departure (AoD) which are used for locating and tracking of devices
So it is a little more then just signal strength.