Samsung's Galaxy S21 could beat Apple to the punch with one small feature

We've been waiting patiently for Apple to drop its device tracking hardware for nearly two years, but Samsung might win the race as a late entrant.

A plethora of leaks from the past few months suggest Samsung will launch something called the Galaxy SmartTag in the near future. Most recently and perhaps most convincingly, 91mobiles published some leaked images of the product that make it look a whole lot like a Tile Pro, a popular tracking device that you keep on valuable items in case they get lost. Misplace one of those items and all you have to do is open a mobile app to see where it went.

Rumors about SmartTag have been kicking around since at least November, with SamMobile reporting on its existence at that time. It appears as though it'll be powered by Bluetooth, which is interesting because Samsung's last attempt at such a product, 2018's SmartThings Tracker, used LTE to track down lost items.

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One can safely assume the SmartTag will play nicely with SmartThings Find, an app Samsung released last year for the specific purpose of finding misplaced Galaxy devices.

Don't be surprised if Samsung reveals SmartTag this month, as we expect some major product reveals from the company on January 14. The real headline-maker will probably be the Galaxy S21 line of smartphones, so it would make sense for SmartTags to launch alongside those.

If all of that ends up happening, Samsung would get a minor advantage in its competition with Apple. We've been hearing rumblings of a similar Apple-branded product supposedly called "AirTags" since 2019, but for whatever reason, Apple hasn't officially unveiled it yet. If Samsung can get SmartTag out the door, that should give Apple extra incentive to make sure AirTags don't go the way of AirPower.