You can now use a Samsung Galaxy SmartTag with any Android phone, but there's a catch

The state of Bluetooth trackers on Android isn’t a patch on the AirTag offering for Apple devices. The biggest reason for this is fragmentation of the Android world, with no native Google tracker to leverage the whole Android ecosystem.

One of the attractive devices is the Galaxy SmartTag, although its biggest downside is it’s a Samsung exclusive and only works with Galaxy phones. Until now, that is.

As detailed by 9to5Google, there’s now an app available called uTag (universal tag) that expands support for all.

It basically hacks SmartThings to allow the Samsung SmartTag to be recognised and used with other Android phones. And when I say “hack”, I’m not being cute – if you’re interested in using uTag the app is only available for sideloading rather than being on the Google Play store.

As detailed on the Medium post from the developer, the uTag app uses some of the features that already exist within SmartThings to communicate with the SmartTag, including encryption. It therefore exists as a companion app for Galaxy SmartTags on non-Samsung devices, while also replacing parts of SmartThings to make it all work.

That means that you can continue to use SmartTags if you move on from Samsung to a different brand of phone, giving you some escape from Samsung’s walled garden. You’ll get the advantage of detection by Samsung devices if you happen to lose your device, and as Samsung is the biggest player in Android, that’s quite a large spread of devices that could potentially detect your tag.

The uTag system also supports UWB – ultra wideband – which is used for precision finding. This is the part that allows the phone to direct you right to the tag, rather than just relying on an audible alarm once you’re within earshot.

The downside, of course, is that none of this is official, so it could be shut down by Samsung at any point. That makes it difficult to recommend buying a load of SmartTags, but if you already have one, it could put it to use again.

Alternatives to Galaxy SmartTags

While Samsung’s Galaxy SmartTag works great with Samsung devices, if you’re from a household with mixed devices or you have another brand of phone, then the obvious alternative is Tile.

Tile was one of the first players in the Bluetooth tracking market and is universal, working across Android and iPhone.

The downside of Tile is that it only works with other Tile users who have the Tile app on their phone. That makes the userbase somewhat small compared to Apple's Find My or Google's Find My Device.

As I said, Google doesn’t range a native tracker itself, but Chipolo offers a tracker that will work with Google Find My Device. Called the Chipolo One Point, this tracker will hook you into the wider Google network to give you wider tracking scope.