Android’s Find My Device network highlights a neglect of UWB | Technology

This week, after a massive delay, Google finally started the rollout of Android’s Find My Device network. It’s existing, but it also highlights the fact that Google, and Android as a whole, have severely neglected UWB tech.

UWB or, ultra wide-band, tech is not particularly new. It’s used for very short-range communication. On a large scale, that’s useful for super high-speed connectivity in smaller areas. But where the tech’s limitations are highlighted by that use case, the same weakness also makes UWB particularly good at communicating with nearby devices in a way that lets you know how close things are to one another.

As such, UWB is useful for things like digital car keys or “tapping” nearby devices to interact with them. Android supports these kinds of uses, but it all depends on your device – this use of UWB requires additional hardware outside of cellular radios – as well as what the software can do.

Google hasn’t really done much with it.

As it stands today, there’s essentially nothing you can do with UWB on, say, the Pixel 8 Pro, which supports the tech. That’s despite Google having stuffed the hardware needed for this in the Pixel 6 Pro, 7 Pro, and Pixel Fold as well. One of the very few places it’s currently…

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