"Find My Items with Bixby" Samsung Upgrades 'SmartThings Find'

[Asia Economy Reporter Joselgina] Samsung Electronics announced on the 20th that it will upgrade and provide the ‘SmartThings Find’ service next week, which allows users to check the location of their Galaxy devices to prevent the risk of loss.

SmartThings Find, which was globally launched in October last year, is a location tracking service utilizing low-energy Bluetooth (BLE) and ultra-wideband (UWB) technology. As of early April, more than 70 million devices out of approximately 700 million devices worldwide capable of using the service have been registered as supported devices.

With this update, features such as finding nearby tags through Bixby voice commands and detecting unknown nearby tags will be provided, further enhancing security and convenience for users.

First, users can easily find items by calling the name of the SmartTag registered in SmartThings Find via Bixby. For example, if a user wants to find their bicycle with a SmartTag attached and has registered the name ‘jajeongeo’ (bicycle) on the SmartTag, they can say, “Hi Bixby, where is my jajeongeo?” and the location information of the item will be visually displayed on a map on the smartphone.

Additionally, by activating the function to find unknown nearby tags, the service detects and notifies users of SmartTags that are moving along with the user’s location without being registered by the user, preventing location tracking through SmartTags attached to items without the user’s consent.

To protect SmartThings Find users’ data, the data used during the location tracking process is encrypted through a randomly changing personal ID every 15 minutes, and device location information is not displayed to anyone other than the user.

Jung Jaeyeon, Executive Director of Samsung Electronics’ Wireless Business Division SmartThings Team, stated, “Samsung’s ecosystem centered on SmartThings is leading the IoT industry,” and added, “There are still many areas to expand, and we will continue to enrich users’ experiences.”

To use SmartThings Find, users can simply access the ‘SmartThings’ app and complete a simple registration process. Devices capable of location tracking include Galaxy smartphones and tablets, smartwatches, earbuds, and SmartTags.