I recently bought some trackers compatible with the Google’s “Find My Device” network, and I’ve been disappointed to discover that Fairphone doesn’t seem to support it (despite in theory every Android device with up-to-date Google Play Services being compatible).
The issue doesn’t seem to be strictly limited to the “Find My Device” network, but it’s probably a GFPS (Google Fast Pair Service), BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) issue with Fairphone devices.
I had issues with connecting other Bluetooth devices sometimes (though the ones that I use most frequently are usually working well enough), and my Fairphone’s NFC seems to work acceptably well (I use Google Pay/Wallet daily). But GFPS on Fairphone doesn’t seem to work.
I believe I noticed this issue in the past when pairing some headset, but I ignored it, since you could still manually pair the device with normal Bluetooth… But the problem is that modern trackers don’t use (of course) energy-intensive Bluetooth, but only BLE, and this makes them unusable with Fairphone.
You can check this on Settings → Google → Devices and sharing → Devices
I took the following screeshots on (in order), my Fairphone 5, my Samsung Tablet, and a old Pixel device. I took them exactly at the same time, all near to each other and with Bluetooth on, while I setup in pairing mode both my XM4 headset, and my Chipolo tracker.
You can see that Fairphone doesn’t see the devices:
While my Samsung tablet does:
(Screenshot removed because new users are allowed a single media upload here in Discourse, will add it back later)
And the old Pixel also finds them (I’m not logged in on my Google account on this device, so that’s also a variable excluded here).
(Screenshot removed because new users are allowed a single media upload here in Discourse, will add it back later)
This is how the “Find My Devices” settings should look like (as from my Samsung tablet):
(Screenshot removed because new users are allowed a single media upload here in Discourse, will add it back later)
See the “Find your offline devices” setting, which allows you to select the granularity at which your device will log and report beacons.
Compare with my Fairphone 5, where the option is missing:
(Screenshot removed because new users are allowed a single media upload here in Discourse, will add it back later)
PS: I tried that before updating Google Play services, after updating it, it asked me to provide the unlock code for another one of my device, and the different granularity settings finally unlocked.
I suspect that the issue is probably due to some missing bits in BLE (which is part of the Bluetooth Core 4.2 spec) in Fairphone’s Android software stack… And when the Google Play Services probe to check for support for this functionality, it doesn’t find what it needs to, and disables functionality in the UI.
Not only this means that I cannot use my Fairphone to setup the trackers, but when I use the “Find My Devices” app, it then only shows my phones/tablets, completely ignoring my trackers (apparently this is a limitation imposed by Google, since it integrated a nearby scan functionality in the app… The same limitation also apply to the web version of the service, and to using the app but in Guest mode on someone’s else compatible device, for example)
PS: as above, this was true only before updating Google Play Services (why don’t they update automatically, though?). Though issues with BLE are still obvious: I cannot register new devices on Fairphone, and I cannot unregister devices
I made sure that my system (including Google Play Services) is up-to-date.
I see that the “Find My Network” has already been mentioned here on Discourse, but the other thread has been written only for the Fairbuds: Possible support for Google Find My Device?
Is this a known issue? Does anyone know of a roadmap for supporting GFPS?
