Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Strings of code offer more info on UWB tracking and AR support for Find My Device.
- The code appears to reference how the app would direct a user to their lost item.
- The features are not live yet.
An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
To quickly catch you up, we discovered code references back in June that point to the Find My Device network getting support for UWB tech. The inclusion of this feature would give the network the upgrade it needs to go toe-to-toe with Apple’s Find My service, allowing for high-precision indoor location tracking. At the same time, we also found that Google was working on adding ARCore support to the service as well. We didn’t know what features ARCore would enable at the time, but we speculated that they could be AR directions that point you to where the tracker is, similar to what you get when using the Galaxy SmartTag 2 with the SmartThings network.
In a teardown of the latest version of the Find My Device app (version 3.1.148), we found more strings related to the features. You can see the strings of code down below.
Code
<string name="compass_view_back">The device is behind you</string>
<string name="compass_view_front">Use the compass to find the device.</string>
<string name="compass_view_left">Turn left</string>
<string name="compass_view_right">Turn right</string>The code includes instructions like “The device is behind you” and “Use the compass to find the device.” It also mentions directions like “Turn left” and “Turn right.” We would imagine that these directions could be presented in AR using the aforementioned ARCore support.
Although it has been a few months, these features are still not live in the Find My Device app. As with any APK teardown, there’s no guarantee that these features will roll out.
