Month: January 2024

I love having the power to find a lost or stolen object using Apple’s Find My technology, and I and the members of my family own multiple AirTags. But an AirTag is too big for your wallet. For the last six months, I’ve been trying out two products that work similarly to an AirTag but that are thin and flat enough to fit in a wallet. First, I started using the Rolling Square AirCard, which I originally backed in a Kickstarter campaign and which you can now purchase on Amazon for $29.90. More recently, I started using a Eufy SmartTrack Card, which is normally $29.99 but which you can currently buy on Amazon for only $16.99 — a fantastic price, so I urge you to buy one quickly before the price goes back up. The core features are similar, but there are some differences between the two products. I prefer the Eufy SmartTrack Card, but my 18-year-old son prefers the Rolling Square AirCard.

The key feature: find your wallet and get notified if you left it behind

The #1 reason to get either of these products is to find your lost wallet and be notified if you left it behind.

Both products let you use the “Add Other Item” feature in the iPhone’s Find My app to add the card so that it appears in the same place in the app as your AirTag and other trackers. Using a map, you can see where the card is currently located. Like an AirTag, these cards lack GPS, but they have Bluetooth, so if any iPhone is in the vicinity of the card, you can get a rough sense of where your card is located. For example, if you go to work and leave your wallet at home with one of these cards in the wallet, you can use use the Find My app to see (1) the last time that the wallet was seen at home (the time when your iPhone was last at home and the card could “see” it via Bluetooth) or (2) the last time that any other iPhone was in the vicinity of the card. So if someone else is in your house, or perhaps even if your wallet is near the front of your house and someone walks by your house with an iPhone, you may be able to see that your wallet was at your house as of just a minute ago.

Both products also help you to find your wallet if you are in the vicinity but cannot find it. Just the other day, I forgot that I had left my wallet in my study. When I went to leave my home and could not find my wallet, I opened the Find My app, selected the card that was in my wallet, and instructed the Find My app to make the card play a sound. My son, who was in the study at the time, immediately yelled that my wallet was in that room. But if he had not been around, I could have just walked around my house until I heard the beeps coming from the card.

Both products also help to prevent you from leaving your wallet behind. You can enable a function in the Find My app to give you a notification if you left the card behind where you are located (with “you” in this case being the place where your iPhone is located). The notification takes a few minutes, so you may be several blocks away before you are alerted that you left your wallet at a restaurant. But that is better than going home and not realizing that your wallet was left in the restaurant until after the restaurant has closed. You can designate certain locations—such as your home—so that you will not receive a notification if your card is left there.

These key features are great, and they work well with both of these products.

Size and weight

Everything that I just described can also be done with an AirTag. What makes these cards different from an AirTag is their size and weight.

A credit card and a driver’s license are mandated to use the dimensions 3.375 inches wide by 2.125 inches high. Both of these tracking cards are that same width and height. In the next two pictures, the Eufy product is at the top and the Rolling Square product is at the bottom:

The ISO requirement for credit card thickness is .76 mm (0.0299 inches). These tracking cards, however, are about three times that thick: about 2.2 mm / 0.09 inches. So by adding one of these tracking cards to your wallet, it is like adding almost three credit cards. By comparison, an AirTag is about 8 mm / 0.31 inches.

Credit card weight varies, with a plastic card around 5 grams and a metal card between 13 and 18 grams. This is a measurement on which these two tracking cards differ. The Rolling Square AirCard weighs about 20 grams whereas the Eufy SmartTrack Card weighs around 18 grams. More importantly, the Eufy card FEELS like it weighs even less, closer to the almost nothingness weight of a business card. I’m not sure why this is so noticeable if it is only a 2 gram difference. Perhaps it is because the Eufy card is surrounded by plastic whereas the Rolling Square product has a glass shell.

I want as little weight as possible in my wallet, and I like the reduced weight and the feel of the Eufy product. My son, on the other hand, also has a Rolling Square AirCard, and he told me that he prefers the feel and look of that product with its glass (see-through in places) and more of techno look to it.

Battery Life

One reason that these two products are smaller and lighter than an AirTag is that there is no replaceable battery. Both devices have a battery sealed inside that should last about 2.5 years or so.

When the Rolling Square AirCard dies, Rolling Square says that you can send back your dead AirCard and get a 50% discount on the purchase of a new one, plus they will recycle the unit you send in. Eufy doesn’t offer a similar service, but considering how inexpensive the product can be (currently $16.99) it isn’t very expensive to purchase a new one.

Additional features of the Eufy SmartTrack Card

If you download the free Eufy Security app—an app that I’ve been using for a long time to work with the Eufy security cameras outside of my home—you gain three more features.

First, if you have a SmartTrack Card but you cannot find your iPhone, you can double-tap the button on the SmartTrack Card to make the Eufy Security app on your phone make noise—even if your iPhone is in silent mode. It plays a version of the B-I-N-G-O song, and if there is a way to change that song, I haven’t found it yet. If you already own an Apple Watch, you won’t need this feature because the Apple Watch can be used to track down an iPhone.

Note that you don’t want to make your iPhone play noise by accident, so the app also has a False Press Prevention mode. This mode turns on automatically 12 hours after you connect the SmartTrack Card. In this mode, if you long press on the button—for example, you sit on your wallet in a way that causes the button to press in—then no sounds will play. This seems like a good precaution to add.

Second, the back of the SmartTrack Card has a QR code, and if you ever lose the card, perhaps someone will pick up the card and scan the QR code to see what happens. If someone does so, and if you have Lost Mode turned on in the Eufy app, then scanning the QR code will lead to a webpage that displays whatever information you choose to provide (if any) in the following fields: Name, Email, Phone, Message. Thus, you can provide your name and phone number and add a message to ask them to call you so that you can get your SmartTrack Card back—and hopefully, your wallet too if it was also lost.

Third, you can optionally choose to let other family members track the the SmartTrack Card using the Eufy app on their iPhone. Note that iOS 17 added the ability to share an AirTag or other item with another person, so this is similar to that except that it uses the Eufy app instead of the Find My app.

Note also that a Eufy SmartTrack card comes with a metal clip that you can (optionally) attach to the card. For me, that removes the key advantage of this product: it is similar to a credit card and can be slipped in a wallet with other cards. But if you want to attach the thin Eufy SmartTrack card to another item, you may find the clip useful.

Additional features of the Rolling Square AirCard

Like the Eufy SmartTrack card, the Rolling Square AirCard has a QR code on it that can be scanned. This is called the Advanced Lost Mode feature, and it allows someone who finds your AirCard and scans the QR code on it to contact you. Rolling Square uses the Sherr.it service for this, which provides certain information about you that you provide.

Second, there is an NFC tag built-in to the back of the AirCard. Tap that spot on your AirCard on top of someone else’s iPhone and that iPhone will go to the same Sherr.it website to get information on you. Rolling Square advertises this as a digital business card; you tap your AirCard with someone else’s iPhone and then they can add you to their contacts. This is somewhat similar to the NameDrop feature that Apple added in iOS 17.

Just like other NFC tags, this NFC tag can also be programmed to do other things, and my son likes being able to program the NFC tag to do various things.

Third, Rolling Square notes that the AirCard can act as an RFID blocker. If you place the AirCard as the outer-most item in your wallet with other credit cards beneath them, signals are blocked before they can get to your credit cards.

Conclusion

With the Eufy SmartTrack card currently almost half the price of the Rolling Square AirCard, it seems like an easy decision to get the Eufy product over the Rolling Square one. This discount may not last long, but I see from the Camel Camel Camel website that this same discount has been offered many times in the past, so I presume it will come back in the future. I also prefer the look and weight of the Eufy product, but consider whether you, like my son, prefer the look of the AirCard and the NFC and RFID features.

Whichever ever one you get, I strongly recommend that you get one of these products for your wallet—whether you carry it in your purse or in a back pocket or elsewhere. You know that, at some point, there is going to be a time when you cannot find your wallet, and this device can come to the rescue. Hopefully, it will just be misplaced in your own home or office while you are still in that location. However, if you left your wallet behind, after you left, either of these devices can notify you using Find My technology. And if someone finds your lost card and scans the QR code, maybe that will be how you recover your wallet. (Note that I use affiliate codes when I link to Amazon, so by using links in this post to make a purchase, a tiny portion of your sale price goes to help pay the costs associated with keeping the lights on here at iPhone J.D.)

Click here to get Eufy SmartTrack card from Amazon (currently $16.99).

Click here to get Rolling Square AirCard from Amazon (currently $29.90).

To start the new year, Brett Burney and I begin this week’s episode of the In the News podcast by discussing what we think will be the biggest Apple-related news of 2024: the Vision Pro headsets, new iPads, AI, and more. We also talk about the Double Tap feature of the Apple Watch Series 9, the new Clicks keyboard for the iPhone, using Shortcuts with the Action button on the iPhone 15 Pro, protecting your iPhone passcode, the fabulous Apple TV+ show Slow Horses, and more.

In our Where Y’At? segment, we discuss using crash detection on the iPhone, SOS on the Apple Watch, and Satellite Roadside Assistance on the iPhone to get assistance when you need it most.

In our In the Know segment, Brett explains why you might want to put a Shazam button on your iPhone Lock Screen, and I explain how you can add advanced filtering features to the Messages app and why it makes sense to do so.

By the way, my microphone settings were incorrect for the first segment of this episode of the podcast, but I fixed it after that. Sorry about the brief technical difficulties!

Click here to listen to the audio podcast, or just listen using your podcast player of choice.  You can also watch the episode on YouTube:

As we start a new year, one cannot help but think about all of the possibilities for the year ahead. In the world of the iPhone and related products, there is a lot to be excited about. Apple has told us that the Vision Pro headset is coming in early 2024, and there are rumors that might mean as soon as January or February. This will be Apple’s first new platform since the iPad was introduced in 2010, so this should be a very big deal. Like the iPad, I hope that it starts out good and then transforms into being great. And speaking of which, since 2023 was the first year since 2010 in which Apple did not introduce a new iPad, I’m sure that we will see new iPad models in 2024, and hopefully it will be something that we all agree was worth the wait. And I’m sure that we will see lots of other interesting new products, services, and more from Apple this year; here are Jason Snell of Six Color’s thoughts about what might be coming. It is exciting to start the year with so many interesting possibilities. And now, the news of note from the past week:

• Before the iPhone, we had the Blackberry and the Palm Treo, both of which featured a small physical keyboard. John Gruber of Daring Fireball reports on a new iPhone case called Clicks that plugs into the USB-C or Lightning port and adds a hardware keyboard. Of course, that also makes the iPhone much taller, but I’ll still be curious to see what reviewers say after trying out this product. I sometimes find it useful to connect a keyboard to my iPhone, so I understand some of the appeal.
• As I reported last week, Apple is once again—for now, at least—able to sell the Apple Watch Series 9 in its stores. Should you get one? Wesley Hilliard of AppleInsider has been using one for the last three months and he shares his thoughts on the Series 9. He likes it a lot, but says that the new double-tap features that is unique to the Series 9 has only limited utility.
• In last week’s episode of the In the News podcast, I mentioned an interesting interview by Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal of a prisoner who stole hundreds of iPhones after getting the passcode. It’s a fascinating story and video that I recommend if you haven’t seen it yet. Let’s all be careful out there and protect your iPhone passcode like it is one of the most confidential and important things in your life. Because it is.
• If you have an iPhone 15 Pro, I think that one of the most useful things that you can do with the Action Button is assign it to a simple shortcut personalized to your specific needs. That’s how I have mine configured. George Tinari of Make Use Of shares some great examples of shortcuts to use with the Action Button.
• Three-in-one chargers that cost around $150 seem to be all the rage right now. Tyler Hayes of How-To Geek reviews the Mophie 3-in-1 Travel Charger, a compact device that unfolds to charge an iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods.
• This story is from around two weeks ago, but it is still worth noting. With Apple’s Satellite SOS service, you can obtain roadside assistance through AAA. That’s great if you are a member, and there is a charge if you are not. But what if you use a competitor service? One such competitor is the Verizon Roadside Assistance program, which Verizon sells to its subscribers for $4.99/month or as a pay-per-use option, and Juli Clover of MacRumors reports that the Verizon program now works with Apple’s Satellite SOS service.
• Stephanie Stahl and Brad Nau of CBS News report on a woman in Delaware who felt herself starting to pass out due to what was later discovered to be carbon monoxide from a faulty heater. Fortunately, she was able to call 911 from her Apple Watch just before she collapsed, and firefighters were able to save her life, plus the life of her cat.
• Chance Miller of 9to5Mac reports on two recent instances in which Apple’s crash detection feature was used to help someone after a crash, including a severe crash in Tennessee on New Year’s Day.
• One of my favorite Apple TV+ shows is Slow Horses, and I binged Season 3 during my vacation for New Year’s. It is so great! Season 4 has already been filmed and should come out later this year. And K.J. Yossman of Variety reports that Apple has just renewed the series for a fifth season. That makes Slow Horses the first show to ever get a fifth season on Apple TV+ since the service debuted in late 2019. Yossman says that the fifth season will be based on the fifth Slough House book by Mick Herron, and to answer your next question, Herron wrote eight of those books so I would certainly love to see eight seasons. If you haven’t started watching Slow Horses yet, it is a great spy thriller, and the episodes are not very long so it is easy to binge.
• And finally, here is a really nice and touching tribute and look back at the best actors and shows on Apple TV+ from last year, a video from Apple called A Toast to 2023: