Latest electronic tracking devices

To cope with my pending decline in mental acuity, I’ve bought a bunch of electronic tracking devices, and promptly tucked them away where I could consider which ones to use and which devices to hook them with. So after a year, I was able to connect my TILE tracker to my phone, and my chipolo tracker to my keys and phone. I’d also bought a FINDELFI device but I hope I didn’t spend too much money on it, because when I tried to set it up, I found the instructions written in fluent gibberish, like a Chinese speaker who’d maybe taken a high school course of study in English had written it, so I decided against activating it. No place to write a thumbs-down review that I can find easily, either.

A couple of questions on the others that I can’t find a ready answer for: the TILE device seems not to have a way to replace the battery–so is the way I find out that the battery is dead that it doesn’t work when I try to use it? Seems kinda counterproductive to me, unless I want to keep testing it all the time. Am I supposed to buy a new TILE every year or so just to be sure?

Have they come out with a new generation of these devices since I bought them (maybe 2019 or 2020 at the latest)? I thought I’d waited long enough to let them work out all the kinks, but apparently I didn’t wait long enough. Do you suppose the batteries ran down at all while sitting in the package until I activated them, or should I expect their lifespans to begin when I first activated them today?

What was your activation procedure? If you look at, e.g. a new Airtag with a battery already in it, you will notice a tab blocking it from making contact, which you have to pull out. I’ve also seen other models of those kind of tags which do not come with a battery pre-installed. Either way, I agree it would be pointless to package one with the battery hooked up and running down.

Some tiles do have replacable batteries. I believe the app will notify you when the battery should be replaced. You don’t have to keep pinging the tile, just open the app once in a while.