Lost-Item Tracker Tile Arrives On Android

When Tile, the square-shaped lost-item tracker that attachesto bags, bikes, key chains and more, announced this fall that it had raised $13 million in funding (a combination of a seed round and Series A investment), the company said it had earmarked some of that money to be put towardshiring more Android engineers. Now that investment has paid off, as Tile today debuts support for Android smartphones, allowing a larger group of users the ability to find missing or stolen items usingtheir mobile device.

Tile, in case you missed it, was one of crowdfundings bigger hits, demonstrating both the potential that comes from raising funds directly from an interested consumer user base, but also the drawbacks. Tile initially struggled to meet its expected shipping times, and then had to struggle through a backlog once things were finally up-and-running. That backlog cleared up around Black Friday this year, and now Tile is processing orders as usual.

The company declined to provide an update on sales figures today, however, but as of October the company reported it had sold half a million devices.

However, according to data from tracking firm SimilarWeb,Tilewent from a 40 popularity score to a 70 SimilarWebs popularity score is its ownmetric thats based on traffic to the app page and store ranking over the past six months in the U.S. Additionally, Tile hasbeen steadily climbing the Lifestyle Category Chart in iTunes and currently sees a lot of external traffic from search to itsapp store page.

The small, Bluetooth device works by pairing with a users smartphone, where a mobile app allows you to track the Tiles location. But instead of only being limited to the range of the Bluetooth connection, Tiles clever idea and its potential differentiating factor is its network. Tile devices set to a Lost mode canbe picked up by any phone thats within range. Its the kind of grand plan that would only really work at scale, but in the U.S., Tiles home market, the company has already seen a few success stories like that of a man wholost his keys on an airplane, and eventually tracked them down when the plane landed in Orlando.

Tile has several competitors, including Duet, BiiSafe, Chipolo, Findster, TrackR,Stick N Find, hipKey, Hone, and others, but Tile is better designed, and has proven to be more reliable, according to reviews. Despite the initial delays,it was worth the wait. Though I havent personally had a need to tap into Tiles network, Ive used the app several times around my own home to find lost keys, and it has always been useful for this sort of minorchallenge.

Until today, the Tile app that allowed for configuring the device pairing and tracking your items was iOS-only. But now, Tiles app is available on Android.

The app will work on most devices running Android 4.4 or higher and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE 4.0). However, the app has been optimized for the Samsung Galaxy S5, LG Nexus 4, LG Nexus 5, HTC One, and HTC One M8. The company says its planning to add support for more Android devices in the future.

While the Android release of a previously available app is not always the most interesting news, in Tiles case, it could impact the companys bottom line without the Android support, Tile was missing the ability to sell to a huge chunk of the smartphone market worldwide. In addition, as more Tile users come on board thanks to the Android expansion, that benefits the current iOS user base as well, as it offers a larger community to call uponwhen items go missing. (Mark as Lost doesnt currently send push notifications on Android as on iOS, but thats shipping in a future release).

Tile is currently sellingfor $25 on the company website and in theAmazon Wearable Technology store.

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Lost-Item Tracker Tile Arrives On Android