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A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

(www.elevationlab.com)
673 points dmd | 2 comments | 18 Dec 24 18:17 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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varenc ◴[20 Dec 24 04:20 UTC] No.42468250[source]▶
If you could disable the public key rotation on the AirTag, presumably you could greatly extend its battery life at the cost of your own privacy. When your battery gets low, Apple warns that "privacy protection is temporarily adjusted, AirTag may be traceable over Bluetooth". Wish I could enable this behavior in certain situations to extend the life.

(Or hook up an oversized external battery like this one, but tune the voltage to ~2V so it always looks like a nearly depleted CR2032 battery!)

replies(1): >>42469873 #
1. fellerts ◴[20 Dec 24 10:32 UTC] No.42469873[source]▶
I doubt that key rotation is a significant contributor to energy use. Energy spent doing RF (transmitting) plus energy spent sleeping will account for over 90 % of the energy use.

Source: I'm in a similar industry

replies(1): >>42472010 #
2. generalizations ◴[20 Dec 24 15:38 UTC] No.42472010[source]▶
I think the airtag just wakes up less frequently on low power, so it has fewer opportunities to rotate the key.