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I believe you just need the smartThings app to track the tags, which is available to all Android devices. You could use GrapheneOS on a pixel and still use your trackers if you want.
Um no, it doesn't work like that. Its not just an "app", the app is just the interface, it require some deeper code that runs in the background to make the network work. Everyone who participates in the network needs their phone to be constantly scanning for other tags, and ig it were just the app, it would get easily killed by the OS, so they made it part of samsung's OneUI, and require OneUI
Also: The second reason it quire Samsung Phone is, I speculate, that its also to incentive people buying Samsung Phone over other brands, which in this case, they succeeded. Having access to such a huge network is very powerful, tile doesn't have such a large network like Samsung or Apple, and since I dislike iOS, my only other option is Samsung, or I'd have to pay a monthly subscription for a cat tracker which would be terrible and very heavy for my cat to wear (and also you need to charge those batteries every 2 weeks, unlike a bluetooth tag that can last months). Samsung is very clever at getting more phone sales.
Google has find my device tags as well just FYI that utilize all modern android devices, so probably a larger network than Samsung's but smaller than apples
I read about it and sounds cool, but inferior to Samsung's smart tags (or Apple's airtags, for that matter).
If you didn't know already, let me explain:
Smart tags that are powered by Google's Find My network doesn't work as well because Google's Find My Network settings default to a setting that requires Multiple devices to scan the tag before the server reveals the tag's location to you.
Sure you might say its for "privacy" and I understand Google is trying to be very noble here. But when my cat goes missing (god-forbid, hopefully never happens) I don't need this fake "nobelness" and "privacy-concious" mindset, I need for my tags to work and for me to find my cat. Google be selling all your info then suddenly wanna pretend like they're some saint when it comes to these tags, bruh the location of the tag is already reported to Google servers, they're just hiding it from your view until they decide enough devices has scanned it. Wtf Google, what' the point of that?
Both Samsung and Apple tags show the location after one device scanning it and reporting the location, Google's however, requires Multiple. Yea just find some youtube video comparison and you see the difference. Google's shit is junk.
Also on top of the issue mentioned above the Samsung Tags have been out for years, Google's have only been recently releases, and is buggy and essentially in beta-testing.
Good info to have, thanks
I recently bought Samsung tags to track my cat, too. The app is available on Pixel but it doesn't allow me to pair with the tag, so no, it's a bit more complicated