[stouset]

BLE is insanely battery-efficient. And in most scenarios with a lost device, it's either stationary or will be stationary for a sufficient period of time to be discovered, so a ping only once every hour is probably more than enough to locate it. Or a ping with exponential backoff as battery depletes.

Sending the locations from these pings likewise also uses negligible battery, as Apple already coalesces timers and network traffic like push notifications.

I don't understand the mentality where people think Apple would have announced this without doing any testing on its battery life impact.

[photojosh]

Yep. I have a BLE speed sensor on my bike which runs off a CR2032 coin cell. It's been two years of daily commuting and I've yet to change the battery.