4 of 5 — Honest limits
What Buzzbelt cannot do.
You are deciding this on behalf of a group of other people's children. Decide it knowing exactly where the product stops — including the one thing it must never be used for.
Not a locator, and not for emergencies.
Buzzbelt cannot tell you where anybody is. It has no location permission, no map and no way to get one. "Reachable" means two phones can hear each other — not that a person is safe, not that they are nearby, not even that they are holding their phone.
If somebody is genuinely missing, this app is not part of finding them. Call them, call the police, and do everything you would have done without it. Never let a name on a screen end a search.
Bluetooth range is short.
Tens of metres between two phones in the open, and less — often much less — through walls, through a crowd, or with the phone in a back pocket. Two floors of a hostel is frequently enough to break the link between two people standing almost above each other.
It works only when you're both in range.
A message reaches phones directly in Bluetooth range of you — tens of metres — not further along through people standing in between. That's designed, but not built yet.
So somebody who has walked away from everybody is reachable by nobody. There is no phone in between to carry it, so there is no message and no headcount entry — exactly when you would most want one.
It costs battery.
The app keeps the radio working all day, and a phone spending the day listening for thirty others does not last as long as one that isn't. Plan for a power bank on a long day. A flat phone is out of reach in exactly the same way a distant one is.
Not encrypted, and no group boundary.
Messages aren't encrypted today, and there's no separate "your group" yet — anyone else running Buzzbelt within Bluetooth range shares the same conversation as you, whether you meant to invite them or not.
Treat it as a room with the door open: anyone nearby with the app can read what's said. Nothing should go through Buzzbelt that you would not say out loud to a stranger standing next to you.