CobraTag
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Phone Halo shows off the Cobra Tag and more at WWDC 2012
We talked about Phone Halo a couple of years ago, when the accessory company was making its own product: A little tracking tag that connected up to your keys or anything else you wanted to hang on to and used a free iPhone app to alert you whenever you needed to find them or whenever they wandered out of range. Since we last talked to them, Phone Halo was able to cut a deal with popular accessory manufacturer Cobra (best known for making speedtrap detectors) and has released the Cobra Tag, a branded and updated version of Phone Halo's original device. The company showed the model off to us at WWDC, and it was suitably impressive: The tag is small, well-designed and works over Bluetooth, with any combination of alerts available. You can search for the tag from the phone or vice versa, and you can have alerts set up for "disconnects" (when the tag leaves the iPhone's Bluetooth range). The app, available for free from the App Store, even tracks the GPS location of the disconnect when you flip it into recovery mode. So while you can't track your keys directly, you can at least see where it was you lost them. There's a lot of impressive things being done here: The tag has an LED light built in, so you have audio and visual feedback when you need to track it. And you can completely customize the iPhone's alerts, even down to choosing a song to play when a disconnect happens. The app runs in the background all of time, and it will even override your mute settings so you'll never miss an alert. Facebook and Twitter are integrated as well, If you consistently need to track keys or anything else around your iPhone, the Cobra Tag is a great solution. There is one major issue with the product, and that is battery life. The tag lasts for quite a while, but the biggest drain is on the phone, which needs to keep up a Bluetooth connection constantly, as well as GPS tracking. As you might imagine, that's a solid drain on the hardware. Now, if you really need to track your keys, that might not be a problem. If you usually keep your iPhone plugged in all day, like at the office or while sleeping at home, you probably won't have a big issue keeping your battery going. And if you absolutely need to track something, the extra battery use will probably be worth it. So while battery life can be a concern, it shouldn't rule out everyone on a product like this. The Cobra Tag is available now for about $60 at retail. Phone Halo also showed us something else they're working on: An app that will be able to track any Bluetooth device, not just the Cobra Tag. Using a generic Bluetooth headset or any Bluetooth device, the new app will be able to do all of the same things that the Cobra tag can do. It's very impressive. Phone Halo is still working on that app. It's hoping to team up with a sponsor of Bluetooth products or someone else to be able to provide the functionality to users for free, and still be able to make money off of the product. But however this tech reaches consumers like us, it certainly seems like Phone Halo is working hard on making it as cheap and easy as possible to track external devices from your iPhone.
Cobra Electronics unveils Cobra Tag G5 ahead of CES
In advance of the official start of CES 2012, Cobra Electronics has introduced a follow-up to its Cobra Tag dubbed the G5. The latest iteration of the Tag, which is a bluetooth device that pairs up to your phone and triggers alarms of your choosing when the two items become separated, now takes advantage of the Bluetooth 4.0 Low-Energy standard. This means the Tag will now offer more than six months of use before requiring another charge, and is interoperable with the Bluetooth 4.0-capable iPhone 4S in addition to its usual list of Android devices. Cobra expects to begin shipping the G5 sometime in Q2, and will maintain its predecessor's asking price of $60. Look below to read the full press release.
Cobra Tag review
Phone, keys, wallet. Discovering that you're missing any of these three items could easily trigger a panic attack, yet they're all so easy to misplace. How many times have you spent twenty minutes looking for keys that were buried between the couch cushions? The Cobra Tag may help you win that losing battle. Acting as a Bluetooth device that attaches to your key ring and connects to your phone, it gives you the opportunity to find the missing item if it's less than 30 feet away. It can also send notifications when the two devices are out of range from each other. The concept sounds convenient, but how does it work in practice? Let's find out. %Gallery-131600%
Cobra Tag Bluetooth key tagging system to ship in July, iRadar and PhoneLynx coming to Android
Cobra's taking a step back from its usual array of radar detectors to make a showing down in Orlando, and as such, today's announcements are all about mobile. The company's Cobra Tag system -- which popped up initially back at CES -- has just been given a price and release date. The Bluetooth tagging system will be keeping track of your car keys (and other miscellaneous items) starting in July, with a Bluetooth key fob linking up with a smartphone app in order to constantly monitor the position of anything it's connected to. All's that required from you is a BlackBerry or Android smartphone, $59.99 and a mindful personality. In related news, the outfit's also making available the previously announced iRadar application for Android, which is used to link your smartphone and radar detector, as well as the PhoneLynx for Android, which enables users to use a landline handset while tapping into Android voice minutes. Hit the source links if you're hungry for more.
