Waking up in my tent on Worthy Farm the Monday morning after Glastonbury festival, all I wanted, desperately, was to be home.
Don’t get me wrong: this year was the best one yet, but now, I was eager to get back to my creature comforts.
Wobbling on a deflating air bed, I grappled for my apple green Uniqlo sling bag, the Tardis-like keeper of all my cherished essentials: most notably cash and bank cards. When my fingers didn’t immediately make contact, I assumed it was somewhere deep under tide of camping gear and clothes strewn across the pop-up tent. No drama; the bag would turn up soon enough, I was sure.
But as I began clearing my things into my backpack, a sense of unease rose like bile. It was nowhere in sight, and being the colour it was, would be easy to spot.
I stumbled around friends’ tents. Still no cigar. As the realisation finally dawned that my bag had either been lost or nicked on the last night of the festival, I kicked myself for being so careless. I’d been coming to Glastonbury since 2013 and had never lost anything of real importance. The time had come to be dramatic.
And then, on the verge of hysteria at the thought of AWOL bank cards, a lightbulb blinked to life somewhere deep inside my sleep-deprived, hungover brain.
Before the festival, I’d activated a Samsung Galaxy SmartTag (£31) with the intention to plant it on my friends so I could find them when we, inevitably, become lost in the huge playground of Glastonbury festival. I figured it might work as an alternative to WhatsApp: Wi-Fi and signal on the farm is dodgy at the best of times.
But I’d never gotten around to tagging friends, and the pebble-sized tracker stayed in the pocket of my Uniqlo bag, where, with any luck, it still was. Clutching the life raft that is my phone, I fired up Samsung’s SmartThings app to see exactly where my bag had wandered off to.
Samsung’s SmartTag works via Bluetooth, creating a mesh network and sending alerts whenever another Android phone is nearby. It updates the app with a rough location as long as it’s within an unobstructed 120m radius. Designed with luggage and lost keys in mind, the Tag was now the only thread of hope I had to find my bag.
My tracker, who I’d named Wally for logical comedic reasons, had been located just a few fields over. The chase was on.
Walking as quickly as I could with bags the size and smelliness of a small cow strapped to my back, I saw Wally was on the move. Each time the tracker passed another Android device, it pinged an update to my phone. By this point, it was moving far too quickly to be on foot. I guessed my bag had been picked up by the cleaning crews and was being driven to the main Lost & Found tent up by the farmhouse, Glastonbury’s logistical HQ.
After a stop-start chase across deserted fields and empty stages, hunting the Tag as the app updated from various locations, I eventually reached the mountains of lost property stacked up in Lost & Found. It resembled Hogwarts’ Room of Requirement back there. How would I ever find my bag amongst so much chaos?
Luckily the app has a button to activate the Tag’s alert; call it the Muggle version of ‘accio bag!’. The busy tent stopped to listen for a tinny tune that seemed to be emitting, like an S.O.S, from the furthest back wall. Digging through a tower of boxes, my Uniqlo bag had finally been unearthed by a volunteer. A cheer rippled through the queue behind me, a shared elation that my bag had been found, in turn offering hope that their lost things would be too.
As I signed my bag out, the impressed Lost & Found volunteer told me that had I not had the SmartTag with its sound feature, it would have taken up to six months to be reunited with my bag and the valuables that were, thankfully, still inside. Thanks to Samsung’s tracking tech, I walked away with (almost - the cash had vanished) everything I skipped onto the farm with, rigidly sticking to the festival’s ‘Leave No Trace’ rule.
Verdict
While I still think the SmartTag would make an excellent person tracker to find lost friends at a big event, I’m so glad I left it in my bag instead.
The unexpected detective adventure - fraught at first, fun in the end - demonstrated just how useful it is and tested its features perfectly. It’s extremely light, fits onto a key chain and the battery life is decent too: a month on and it’s only just fading - although charging via a USB port would be a much better, greener alternative than the silver disk battery replacement required.
One thing’s for sure: I won’t do another festival without it.
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Samsung Galaxy SmartTag Bluetooth Item Finder and Key Finder
Buy now £31.00, Amazon
Samsung Galaxy SmartTag
Also available in pink, green and beige colourways.
Buy now £59.99, Amazon
Apple Airtag
Whether it’s losing your keys, misplacing your wallet, or ending up stranded at an airport without your luggage, everyone could do with a pack of AirTags that show you the direction and distance of your lost item. The battery lasts for over a year, is easy to replace, and is even water resistant so no need to worry if you drop your keys in a puddle. Pair it with the AirTag Loop for an added extra.
Buy now £29.00, Currys
Tile Pro - in a nutshell
Offering parallel performance to the AirTag, it’s little wonder the Tile is the main contender from the non-Apple side of the GPS tracker equation. Powerful and blessed with epic Bluetooth range, backed by an app that takes your tracking to – potentially – all corners of the globe, there is a lot to like in this slim and sleek aide to keeping hold of your accoutrements; and it’s compatible with both Apple and Android.
Buy now £25.95, Amazon
