Tile can now help find your phone, even if it’s on silent

By Jenny McGrath August 19, 2015

The downside of keeping your phone on silent is that when you’ve lost it among the couch cushions, its feeble vibration sound often isn’t enough to alert you to its presence. Tile is expanding beyond its little Bluetooth tracker with a Find Your Phone app that will solve the problem.

Originally, Tile was a little device that you could clip to your keys or stick in your bag. During your morning misplaced-my-keys routine, you could use your smartphone to track it down, as long as you were in 50 to 100 feet of the lost item. The Tile would play a little song to help you find it (inside your backpack the whole time, of course). The problem was that its 0.5-inch thickness still made it a bit too bulky to stick on your phone. Now, Tile has announced its app update allows users to find a missing phone, even when it’s on silent or vibrate.

If you have a Tile attached to your keys, you can click the E in the logo and your phone will ring. Those without the tracker can still use the app from another smartphone or on the Web app and get a little map showing where the phone was last seen. The Tile itself also got a few upgrades, including a louder ring and slightly slimmer design. Since it debuted, Tile wanted its community to help find objects that are actually lost, not just displaced. Now all users phones will be able to help search out a missing Tile. If you left your bag on the bus and a Tile owner is sitting a few seats in front, you’ll get an alert, but the unwitting detective won’t have any idea he’s just cracked the case.

The Tile costs $25 and is now available in T-Mobile stores, as well as online. Its battery only lasts a year, so you’ll have to keep putting it on your Christmas list every December.

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Former Digital Trends Contributor

Jenny McGrath is a senior writer at Digital Trends covering the intersection of tech and the arts and the environment. Before…

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