Chipolo makes a handful of Bluetooth trackers that compete directly with similar trackers from Tile. And both Chipolo and Tile have their own proprietary networks that help you find your lost tracker.
But with the new Chipolo One Spot, all that has changed.
Chipolo has jettisoned their own Europe-centric network in favor of tapping into Apple’s massive Find My community of users with the new Chipolo One Spot.
The Chipolo One Spot tracker uses Apple’s Find My app
200 million iPhone users help you find your Chipolo One Spot Tracker.
Chipolo has always been second to Tile because of Tile’s US-based network and astute marketing on Tile’s part. In fact, Tile has become a household name when it comes to Bluetooth trackers.
But then, Apple upset the apple cart (ha!) with the introduction of the AirTag in April 2021. It’s designed to work with their existing Find My app that comes pre-installed on every iPhone.
The Chipolo One Spot now uses the exact same Find My app as Apple!
Now, instead of a paltry 5 or 10 million iPhones anonymously crowd searching for your lost tracker, there are more than 200 million! And that’s just in the U.S.!
| Chipolo app | 5 million users – mostly in Europe |
| Tile app | 10 million users – mostly in U.S. |
| Apple Find My app | 200+ million users in U.S. – a billion users worldwide |
What is crowd search? Crowd Search (also called crowd GPS, community search, community find, or lost and found network) uses a tracking network such as Chipolo or Apple Find My to find any lost item that has a tracker connected to that network. When the phone of another member of the network comes within Bluetooth range of the lost item, that phone will anonymously send the GPS location of the lost item through the network to the owner’s phone.
With a potential billion users, the AirTag quickly became THE tracker to own. It vastly increased the chance of you finding your phone over the much tinier Tile and Chipolo networks.
This is why Chipolo’s decision to tap into the Apple Find My network with the Chipolo One Spot is such a game changer.
The decision to use the Apple Find My app has moved Chipolo from a third place finisher into the major leagues, right next to Apple.
This table compares the Chipolo One, Chipolo One Spot, Tile Mate, and the Apple Air Tag.
[wptb id=24731]Swapping the Chipolo app for the Find My app
The key thing to remember is that the Chipolo One Spot uses the Find My app exclusively. You have to give up the Chipolo app completely when using this new tracker.
That means no more selfie mode, sharing, or double clicking your tracker to ring your phone from the Chipolo app. Find My just doesn’t have these features. Personally, I’m really going to miss using my tracker to find my phone
The good news for those of us who love the Chipolo app is that Chipolo is still making the Chipolo One tracker. It continues to use all of the features of the Chipolo app.
Another Chipolo tracker that is making the switch to the Apple Find My app is the wallet-sized Chipolo CARD 2022 that will be available in March 2022. It integrates with the Find My app the same way, but it’s designed to fit into a wallet.
It’s barely the thickness of a few credit cards and will fit comfortably in your wallet in a way that the clumsy AirTag just can’t do.
Differences between Chipolo One Spot and Apple AirTag
So what’s the difference between the Apple AirTag and the Chipolo One Spot? Not a whole lot.
My favorite feature of the Chipolo is that it has a convenient hole to easily put the tracker on a key ring. For the AirTag, you need to buy some sort of holder in order to attach the AirTag to anything. That little hole in the Chipolo tracker seems so simple and inconsequential, but it’s oh so handy.
The tracker alert sound is really loud, too. Maybe even a little louder than the AirTag.
The AirTag counters with its ability to communicate with the NFC chip in your iPhone. And it uses more precision finding (Ultra Wide Band radio) when the AirTag is within Bluetooth range.
As for Tile? It’s pretty much left out of the party. Chipolo has won this round.