By Becca del Monte, mechanical engineer & member of the informal freelance collective
Why this crossed our desks: Tile makes three main tracker products, all with the same functionality and requirements but with different form factors. They’re all impressively small in their own way, while including a lot of features that aren’t easy to achieve at such a small size, like Bluetooth, 3-year battery life (non-replaceable), a speaker, and IP68 waterproofing.
I wanted to learn about how to make tiny, rugged electronics, and it was very helpful to compare these three otherwise identical products to see how different decisions were made based on form factor. This teardown focuses in on the Tile Sticker. Stay tuned to this series as I make my way through the other two trackers!
<aside>
Product lineup: The Tile Slim for wallets (1), ****the Tile Mate for keychains (2), and the Tile Sticker (3), which has a flat back and adhesive to attach to remote controls, bikes, etc.
Features: Each Tile has a button (4), which is under the large circular logo for the first two products and on the side for the Sticker. Also visible are the speaker holes (5) on the front of the Slim and Sticker and on the back of the Mate.
Other than these features, there are some laser-etched and printed markings and the hanging hole on the Mate — and that’s it. The design is very simple and rugged.
Dimensions: I’m calling these out specifically because they’re quite small!
</aside>
<aside>
We’ll start by tearing down the Tile Sticker, which is the thickest of the three at 8 mm and might have more traditional design choices. It’s also the only Tile to have a separate articulated button (1), which adds some waterproofing complexity.
The function of the Tile Sticker is, obviously, to stick to stuff. It comes with one adhesive sticker (2) and a protective cover on the back of the product so that you have a pristine surface for sticking. I tried it out on my phone case (3) and carried it around for a week on my phone to see if it would either fall off or be hard to remove. Impressively, it never budged until I decided to remove it, and it peeled right off cleanly (4).
💡It was a great experience but I’d like to see them provide more stickers. I couldn’t even find replacements on their website, and it seems obvious someone might want to reuse this tracker on different items.
</aside>
<aside>
This product was sealed up so tight that I figured I’d need a Dremel to get inside — and I was right! After grinding away a chunk of the outer edge, I managed the enclosure open with a screwdriver, revealing a continuous ultrasonic weld (1) joining the two halves together.
Not too surprising, considering welding is a very space-efficient way to make a joint waterproof. However, it’s a risky choice for such a critical product, since it’s tough to ensure a perfect weld every time. This one looks clean and solid, but hold that thought for the other two Tiles!
</aside>
<aside>
The board and battery came out of the enclosure pretty easily together, but separating the two was a lot trickier. The coin cell battery (CR2032) is actually spot-welded directly to the battery contacts (1), which are thin strips of metal soldered to the ends of the board. This makes for a super thin and robust connection, with no need for a spring to hold pressure on the battery. It’s a little scary to apply heat to a battery, but these tough little coin cells seem to be able handle it just fine.
Here are a few other interesting notes:
We’ll get into these last two in a bit.
</aside>