Vodafone have a new product which is a little device you charge and put a sim in, then you use an app (Android only at the moment) and you can track the little device.

Brilliant if you're Matt Allwright tracing fly tippers, but what else could you use this for. Would you be interested in one?

This guy posted it to himself just to track it!

f! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DLqgOy98hQ

I believe very high value shipments have a GPS tracker (and shock/orientation).

You could also stick it onto something valuable, like a bike or something. Or maybe something more suspect.

I believe regular travellers use versions intended for international use, to track baggage

£15 for the box and the contract is a £2 a month subscription by the way if anyone is interested, cancellable any time.

http://xone.vodafone.com/uk/product/findxone/

Says no roaming charges, unlimited use so maybe quite good for international travel as Moox said. Pets too as it says on the site, any other ideas?

Battery life is always going to be an issue with these devices.

Looks good especially this bit on the website. Cheap enough to use for primary school kids (is that considered immoral it's a long time since I had once?) or pets or to leave in my work bag which I always seem to leave somewhere.

Also we're getting it 30p cheaper than the Europeans a month. It's costing them 3 Euro each month.

Ah, so when they said no roaming charges, what they actually meant was "only works in those countries listed" but those countries are free. That maybe changes things slightly for those who travel a lot thinking of luggage tracking.

Young children maybe, but once they get to the age where they are allowed to make their own decisions and they can go out with friends I'd say it's time to let them free and don't be one of 'those' parents.

I'd love one, but I fear I'd hardly ever use it and have no real need for it. You're talking to the man with every gadget going including the ring doorbell and everything, but not sure I would really have a use for the tracker.

As far as battery is concerned you can set the interval at which it sends it's location, the further apart you set it, the longer the battery life.

I certainly think there is an application for luggage tracking and potentially parcel deliveries if a high value. However, I agree, difficult to justify this for what it is.

In an ideal world, something that could link in with Google location services (using GPS, AGPS etc) would be ideal!

Does the Vodafone tracker use AGPS?

I hope it can ping its location via GPRS, otherwise tracking across most of the UK might prove challenging for it...

On a more serious note, I can think of a few ethically questionable uses for it, but would probably see it as a pet / child tracker primarily.

At the risk of going off topic I absolutely agree, one of the parents at my son's school was telling me how to track my 17 year old son with iCloud and Find my iPhone, it is very easy for parents to emulate East Germany now for their children now.

To try and maintain some semblance of on topicness it's a bit of a fib the roaming but I think it's still not bad. Now for them to bring that to their domestic plans and I'm on.

The one use I'm astonished nobody has mentioned yet is a tracker for a classic car or similar. Find a way to hide it & supply it with power from the vehicle's power supply and you're good to go (assuming regular vehicle use or trickle charging)

Plenty of firms could use these to track vehicles, plant equipment or other valuable items that are easy to steal.

Presumably you could use on animals as well to carry out surveys of movements for research etc.

Not necessarily, it doesn't need to be real time tracking. It could fire up every 5/10/15 minutes, connect to the network, establish a GPS fix, send result, go to sleep again. The battery should last quite a long time that way.

Trackers seem to have declined in usage since he increase of cars fitted with an immobiliser (and or alarm), they were never widespread as most don't want to fork our the cost of them, though this is ideal.

Its very difficult to nick a car nowadays as technology has become more clever and sophisticaed, me and the hubby were talking about this the other week, actual break in and enter then stealing a car is rare nowadays as you need the key to turn the thing on.

Putting them in a car would be a good idea though, should the worst happen you could prove where you were at a given point although that would be big brother and sliding down a rocky path

I have an old sheepdog that is always roaming...... hmm, I wonder May save me shouting the deaf old git! With one of those fitted I could track him and then surprise him. He'll spend hours wondering how he was caught so quick

Could be something I look at for attaching to my bike in some way, bike is over £5k worth so would be great to track it if stolen

Is the sim card removable? How much data etc does it have? Surely £2 a month for a sim card with data is fantastic haha

I would bet squillions of pounds that the SIM has some sort of restriction on it to prevent that.

I recall that people tried to do the same with the SIMs in Kindles that have built in 3G - also supplied by Vodafone - they got shut down quickly for obvious reasons

The sim only needs to be able to connect to the Vodafone servers, I bet it doesn't have any internet access outside of that specific service.

I wrote about this and the car one last month. The findxone has a very buggy app (still not fixed) and the unit itself has poor battery.

The car one is great and I've just got the bike one last week. Still to set that up though.

http://jmcomms.com/2016/01/07/drivex...vodafone-xone/

From their FAQs;
Is it normal for the device to become warm during use?
It is normal for your findxone device to become warm during operation. However, if your findxone device produces high, amounts of heat, smoke, swelling or deformation, battery leakage, and other abnormalities, you should stop using the device immediately and contact us.

How would you find it if it's on fire?


As recommended by divorce lawyers?

To pick out a detail from your review:





http://xone.vodafone.com/uk/findxone-faq/


From the text review accompanying the video in the OP:



Hahaha!

http://www.coolsmartphone.com/2016/0...person-easily/


An interesting observation from another review:


along with echoing the concern on battery life:



http://gadgetynews.com/vodafone-find...racker-review/

A Thingsee may be more versatile and have a large battery (1,900mAh) (@ 3.7V ? = 7.03Wh ?) but one disadvantage, aside from its expense, is that a SIM card and service plan are not included.



http://xone.vodafone.com/global/product/findxone/

Does anyone know the specific battery capacity of the Vodafone findxone?


Has anyone tried the Trackimo TRKM002 with 600mAh (@ 3.7V = 2.22Wh) battery (£75 RRP, or £67.27 street price, including one year of service with subsequent years charged at 4.95 EUR)?

Not sure how it compares with the Trackimo TRK100 with 600mAh (@ 3.7V = 2.22Wh) battery ($140 street price, including one year of service with subsequent years charged at $5 USD as they look identical).

http://shop.trackimo.com/images/manual-2015.pdf


It'll be interesting to see how the WTS Trax Play ($100 + $5 p/m with two-year commitment) fares when it is released in March, given the mixed reports on the hardware 515mAh (@ 3.7V ? = 1.9Wh ?) battery life and software stability of the original Trax variant.


I'm also keeping an eye out for the TUMI Global Locator (based on LugTrack technology), which seems to be more versatile than the battery-less TRACE ME Luggage Tracker (£12.50).

The problem with mine is the app is so buggy, I couldn't change the update frequency. The unit itself also crashed so the only option was to wait until the battery died. There's no reset option.

The car one looks pretty useful, but I'm not sure how well it'd fit in my car, the plastic cover sits quite flush to the OBD port