A slight change from our usual app of the week, the Tile app hasn’t actually been launched yet. It’s not going to be fully launched for another 4-6 months actually, however it deserves a mention in our App of the Week section because of the amount of hype that surrounds it. In one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns that we’ve ever seen, they have managed to raise over 5,800% of their target funding with still 7 days left to go to (target of $20,000, total amount raised so far – $1,163,331), but what is Tile?
Tile is a small square piece of plastic that you can attach to your keys, put in your wallet, stick to your bike – really attach to anything that there is a good chance you might lose. You then register each tile with your phone and in the event of it going missing, you can just look in the app and it will point you in the direction of the tile. Tiles work using Bluetooth, so you have to be 50-150 feet away from the item for it to be picked up by your phone. This may sound useless if you’ve been out and about all day and can’t remember where you might have dropped your wallet, but you can flag a Tile as lost through the app and it will use other peoples phones who also have the Tile app installed to let you know the last seen location of your tile.
Tiles come with a built in speaker so you can make them sound when you are in the vague area to make sure you can find it as easily as possible. The battery on a Tile will last for about a year, then you exchange it for another one, making sure you always have the latest Tile available to you. You can also share Tiles with friends and family, so say for example you can’t remember where you left the keys for the family car and someone needs to borrow it, you can share that tile with whoever wants to use the car and they will be able to search for it in the house.
We’re really excited to see Tile launched, by the looks of the kickstarter campaign it’s going to be a worldwide hit and the name Tile will be a household brand pretty quickly. Even though it’s not launched until this Winter, you can pre-order your Tiles now through the Tile App website