{"id":529147,"date":"2026-03-11T13:23:18","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T13:23:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/529147\/"},"modified":"2026-03-11T13:23:18","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T13:23:18","slug":"shocking-results-after-i-shipped-apple-google-and-tile-trackers-across-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/529147\/","title":{"rendered":"Shocking results after I shipped Apple, Google, and Tile trackers across Europe"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"bluetooth<\/p>\n

Rita El Khoury \/ Android Authority<\/p>\n

After Google launched its Find Hub network in the summer of 2024, I spent more than a year testing it as well as all the compatible Bluetooth trackers and came away more than disappointed. Find Hub was very unreliable<\/a>, and my trackers would sometimes only update their location once every few hours and disconnect pretty often, even when they were right next to my phone. This happened in several cities and countries across Europe and West Asia.<\/p>\n

But things have drastically improved since then. Nowadays, every time I check the Find Hub app, all my trackers show an updated location \u2014 often within the previous minute or two. A Pebblebee Find Hub-compatible tracker even saved my luggage in Athens<\/a>, thanks to its very accurate and up-to-date location. But was this just a vague impression, or have they really become more reliable? I decided to test it out by shipping a bunch of trackers to my Android Authority colleagues to find out.<\/p>\n

What’s your experience with Google’s Find Hub Bluetooth trackers?<\/p>\n

101 votes<\/p>\n

They work really well for me.<\/p>\n

22%<\/p>\n

I had issues at first, but now they’re reliable.<\/p>\n

13%<\/p>\n

I gave up on them after I had many issues.<\/p>\n

12%<\/p>\n

I still haven’t bought any.<\/p>\n

53%<\/p>\n

I shipped a bunch of trackers to my teammates<\/p>\n

\"google<\/p>\n

Rita El Khoury \/ Android Authority<\/p>\n

Since I\u2019ve been testing a lot of Bluetooth trackers for\u00a0Android Authority, they\u2019ve been piling up on my desk, so I thought it was high time I shared the goods with the rest of the team. After all, there\u2019s only so many backpacks, bags, and slings I can slide these in.<\/p>\n

I packed up a bunch of trackers to ship from Paris to my Managing Editor in Romania: Bogdan was headed for MWC in Barcelona and could easily share the trackers with several team members there. I reset a few trackers and removed their batteries, but I kept four of them alive:<\/p>\n

Pebblebee Clip \u2013 Google Find Hub
\nPebblebee Tag \u2013\u00a0Google Find Hub
\nTile Mate Pro \u2013 Tile app
\nChipolo ONE Spot \u2013 Apple Find My<\/p>\n

The Tile and Chipolo had functional batteries inserted, while the Pebblebee trackers were charged up. All four were still connected to my accounts, so I could keep an eye on them on their journey. Since my goal was to see how well Google\u2019s network was working, I checked up on the other trackers a little less often. Also, I don\u2019t carry my test iPhone with me all the time, so I couldn\u2019t track the Chipolo as frequently as the Pebblebee or Tile trackers.<\/p>\n

Google\u2019s trackers were astonishingly accurate and fast<\/p>\n

Every single time I opened Find Hub to check where my Pebblebee Clip and Tag were, I saw that the location had last been updated within one to four minutes. The longest delay was around seven minutes. It was surprising to see this consistently good timing throughout the trackers\u2019 journey from Paris to Romania, then to Barcelona.<\/p>\n

The trackers went from the post office in La D\u00e9fense, where I deposited the package, to the area around Roissy and Charles de Gaulle airport. They stayed there for several days, moving around the airport\u2019s facilities until they were shipped to Romania. This was actually the only time I lost track of them for a couple of hours, since they were flying. Then they landed in Romania near the airport and made their way to Bogdan. A day later, they disappeared for a few more hours as they flew with Bogdan to Barcelona and landed near Avenida Diagonal.<\/p>\n

What surprised me most about this entire experiment is that I never really lost track of them (apart from the flights\u2019 durations), whether they were roaming the empty, infrastructure-heavy Roissy area, rural Romania, or Barcelona\u2019s city center. This is proof of how good and reliable Google\u2019s network has become.<\/p>\n

\"shippedPebblebee Tag updated before take-off\"shippedPebblebee Clip updated before-take-off\"shippedPebblebee Tag, last updated after landing<\/p>\n

Last year, I was recommending people buy Samsung\u2019s Galaxy SmartTag 2 as the only reliable Android tracker<\/a>, even if you had to use the hacky uTag app to make it work on non-Samsung phones, but this isn\u2019t the case anymore. Yes, Samsung\u2019s tracker still has some benefits for Samsung smartphone users (location history, smart home controls, plenty of extra features), but the core feature, i.e., tracking a lost item, is no longer so vastly superior to Google\u2019s Find Hub trackers. So if you don\u2019t have a Samsung phone, I can finally confidently say that you don\u2019t need the hacks anymore. You should be good with any new Pebblebee, Chipolo, or modern Find Hub tracker<\/a>, which will pair with the default Find Hub app on any Android phone.<\/p>\n

Apple and Tile were disappointingly slower than Google<\/p>\n

\"google<\/p>\n

Rita El Khoury \/ Android Authority<\/p>\n

On several occasions during the experiment, I checked to see what the Chipolo ONE Spot and Tile Mate Pro were reporting back in comparison to the Pebblebee trackers. The four trackers were on par a few times, but there were still instances where both Tile and Apple\u2019s networks were slower to update than Google\u2019s.<\/p>\n

I saw lapses that went anywhere from seven minutes to 41 minutes on Apple\u2019s Find My, while Tile went many hours behind at times. These are all tabulated when the trackers were on the ground, not flying, and while the Pebblebee Tag and Clip were showing a more recent and more accurate location on Google\u2019s Find Hub. See for yourself \u2014 the three sets of screenshots below were all taken at the same time:<\/p>\n

\"shippedPebblebee Clip, last seen 2 mins ago\"shippedChipolo ONE Spot, 41 mins behind\"shippedTile Mate Pro, 91 mins behind<\/p>\n

I expected this kind of discrepancy from Tile, especially once the package was out in the weeds in rural Romania \u2014 after all, the network isn\u2019t as widespread as Apple\u2019s or Google\u2019s in Europe. But still, seeing several hours of delay around Roissy was very disappointing on my Tile Mate Pro. Even when it had reached Barcelona, it was still slow to report its location, often exhibiting delays of 15-20 minutes.<\/p>\n

\"shippedPebblebee Tag, last seen 4 mins ago\"shippedChipolo ONE Spot, last seen 7 mins ago\"shippedTile Mate Pro, nearly 4 hours behind<\/p>\n

What I didn\u2019t expect, though, was seeing some big delays from Apple\u2019s network. Most times, it hovered between four and seven minutes, but I frequently saw it 15 minutes behind or more, which is uncharacteristic of Apple\u2019s network. Maybe it happened because I was using a third-party Chipolo tracker (though that shouldn\u2019t be a factor), or maybe because the battery was weak and the tracker wasn\u2019t updating its location as frequently in order to conserve power. But nothing explains the 41-minute lag when the tracker was in the middle of the busy Otopeni airport, while Pebblebee was only showing a couple of minutes of delay.<\/p>\n

\"shippedPebblebee Tag, last seen 3 mins ago\"shippedChipolo ONE Spot, last seen 15 mins ago\"shippedTile Mate Pro, last seen 1 minute ago<\/p>\n

Whatever the reason, I\u2019m very disappointed in Apple\u2019s performance there. The company\u2019s Find My used to be the gold standard against which I measured all trackers, but after seeing Google\u2019s network performance in this test, I\u2019m starting to question: Should I start measuring tracker performance against Google Find Hub instead? After all, it\u2019s the one that updated consistently throughout the entire journey and never lost my package. Maybe Android\u2019s widespread presence is finally playing the positive role we were hoping for in making Find Hub a solid, reliable tracking network.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t want to miss the best from Android Authority?<\/p>\n

\"google\"google<\/a> (Note: Add this at the end if the article is too long and has enough room to put the disclaimer in the middle and the newsletter widget at the end; otherwise, keep the disclosure box at the end.)<\/p>\n

Thank you for being part of our community. Read our\u00a0Comment Policy<\/a> before posting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rita El Khoury \/ Android Authority After Google launched its Find Hub network in the summer of 2024,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":529148,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[97879,89897,99198,45,49,48,44653,192],"class_list":["post-529147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-apple-airtag","tag-bluetooth","tag-bluetooth-trackers","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-find-hub","tag-google"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/529148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}