r/smartwatch

My watch is stuck in ENG MODE due to curiosity and a lack of Chinese language knowledge?! Well, the harm is done. I cannot EXIT this mode no matter what I tried. I can only get the watch to training mode for a short time in which I can access the watch menu and even if set it up for a factory reset, after reboot the watch just goes into ENG MODE... What allowed me to access this menu?? Well, a specific version of the MiFitness app, v 9.3.869 I have a few extra line in Chinese attached to the Device...

Charging screen. Does not go above 82%!

From the PHONE tab you can enable BTH connection and connect the watch to the MiFitness app.

Note: This is a follow up on this piece.

Hi! I’ve been living with a black Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 Classic 47mm LTE for the past year with the goal of replacing my phone with it. While I haven’t been totally successful in that goal yet I’ve gotten quite close and believe it’s possible in the near future. This watch is able to do 95% of what I need my phone to do, from texting others to checking the weather and adding events to my calendar. I think with some support on the app developer side there’s some real potential for a watch capable of far beyond what most people would think. For the $75 this watch goes for refurbished on Ebay it’s a no brainer purchase for anyone with an Android phone or considering buying a minimalist phone. It’s especially great for anyone willing to do some tinkering.

Even since the Apple Watch 3 came out with a cellular option I’ve been dreaming of leaving my phone behind. It had everything needed to do it; the screen for chatting, the anywhere connectivity, and the convenience of not needing a pocket to keep it in; all I needed was the software to implement it. I waited many years and purchased a pair of Misfit (RIP) hybrid watches, the original Oneplus Watch and a Galaxy Watch 4 before I believed this dream was achievable with this device, the Galaxy Watch 6 Classic. While the hardware has been spectacular, software support continues to fall behind. Luckily I have an ace up my sleeve. I discovered with the Galaxy Watch 4 that you can sideload phone apps onto a watch! With some experimenting I believed this feature was what was missing, so I purchased a Galaxy Watch 6 Classic on Ebay for $120. My early experiences were documented here, but safe to say I was pretty excited about its potential. This is my longer term, actually living with it review.

Hardware

The hardware on the 6 Classic has been absolutely stellar. Of the watches I’ve owned, this is the best looking one yet. I get compliments on it on a regular basis. I then start talking about everything I’ve done to it and most people’s eyes start to glaze over lol. The material choice is great, with stainless steel making for a nice outside finish. I’ve also collected zero scratches on either the ceramic screen or the black finish on the watch I purchased. I only wish it was made of aluminum or titanium instead purely for weight reasons, but that’s a small and livable gripe. The Samsung 1st party band I got for it has worn quite well and goes with the watch nicely. The overall fit is quite comfy on my average sized wrists and I never notice any issues with it snagging on my clothes.

The display is the largest of any previous smartwatch I’ve owned and it’s made a big difference. Apps are much easier to navigate and the full keyboard is easy to use. The only things it’s missing are maybe an anti-glare coating and a little bit more brightness for use on a sunny day. That coating would also add to its appearance as a “regular” watch. The rotating dial on the other hand has been an absolute game changer. Accessing my tiles or looking at my notifications is now as easy as rotating the bezel to the piece of information I need. It’s reduced the time to get anywhere in the operating system substantially while being reliable and durable in the process. I think the larger notches on the Watch 8 Classic would be a welcome addition, although the fine knurling on the outside of this device works just fine. The buttons button, more plz.

Battery life has been great most of the time and horrible some of the time. While it’s paired to my phone and just using bluetooth I can usually get 2 days of light use with always on display on. This is more than acceptable to me and just means I plug in my watch as much as my phone. While on a cellular connection I can get about a day with light use but as soon as the modem has to work hard the battery life plummets. My former workplace had very marginal cell phone signal and after about an hour the modem had worked so hard that it *overheated* the watch. I only got a battery life of a few hours. The same applies if you have to transfer a lot of data, i.e. browsing the web or taking a phone call. Sideloading apps has probably reduced the watch’s battery life but it’s likely balanced out by getting rid of apps I don’t need that were themselves running stuff in the background. I haven’t noticed an impact. I’m hopeful that with 5G watch modems coming online like Apple has this problem will be reduced somewhat.

Performance of the SOC has been pretty great when using native apps. Everything launches smoothly and the software runs well when it doesn’t run into bugs. Sideloaded apps have been a mixed bag based mostly on how much the watch has to load into RAM. Facebook Messenger launches in about a second and is snappy throughout. Discord takes several seconds to load and struggles with basic actions like changing chats. The processors in Samsung smartwatches took a big step forward when the W1000 made its debut in the Watch 7 series. I haven’t gotten to test it but that big core has me drooling.

By far the largest issue with the hardware has actually been the onboard microphone. The speakers are okay, just a little quiet, but the microphone has been absolute trash. My partner hates when I call them on my watch so much that they have advised me to never call anyone with it. Hopefully Samsung has fixed this with the newer models.

The vibration motor is too weak. Please make it stronger so I don’t miss as many notifications.

Software

This is the meat and potatoes of this review. The software on this device is what makes or breaks it as a phone replacement. With proper software, a clean and bug-free operating system and a functioning companion app, the Watch 6 Classic could easily replace my phone in my daily life. Sadly this is not the case. App developers continue to not support or even withdraw support from the Wear OS ecosystem, the operating system has consistent bugs but a great vision for what is possible, and the phone companion app is so bad it can’t remember what temperature units I want and can’t upload new watch faces *that it advertised to me*. Let’s dive into each one of those separately.

The app experience is one of peaks and troughs. Properly made apps like Spotify and Google Messages work extremely well. They’re fast, intuitive to use, and make me question why I carry a phone at all. If everything you need from a minimalist phone is offered within the native apps ecosystem of Wear OS I would highly recommend buying one of these instead. There are some poorly designed apps that I have encountered but that’s mostly resulted in a buggier experience, not an unintuitive experience. With some additional support these apps are destined for greatness too.

Sideloading phone apps has been a process of trial and error. If you’re curious how this works and how to do it yourself, please check out my original writings on this topic. There’s a lot of fiddling involved but it’s worthwhile if you just need a couple of missing apps like I was. Most of the apps I’ve tried sadly haven’t worked. Most don’t even launch while some are completely broken from the moment it opens. Even if you get an app working there’s still massive downsides. The UI of every app doesn’t work like it’s supposed to because they’re all designed for a rectangle screen. There’s a lot of pressing the corner of the screen hoping that you can reach a UI element’s hotbox. There’s also performance issues that are described in the hardware section. If you have any apps that you want on your Galaxy Watch but don’t know if they’ll work please let me know in the comments and I’ll test it on my device. I’ve had the idea of designing watch versions of apps myself. For example, I’ve been considering uniting Discord’s API with a demo WearOS messaging app that’s available on Google’s development website. If you have expertise in this and want to do the same thing, reach out and maybe we can make something happen.

Samsung’s version of WearOS has fantastic bones but overall poor execution. The basics of how you interact with the device, from using the dial to check the weather tile to the assignment of the buttons (Home on top, Back on bottom for me) is perfect and needs no changes. Swiping down from the top of the screen to access the control center works well as long as apps design around that limitation and don’t put something up there (I’m looking at you Gboard). The only thing that’s missing from the control center is a toggle for turning on and off the cellular connection. Instead I have to dive deep into the settings to turn it on and off. Notifications are great, with customizable quick options and a little red dot on the left hand side of the watch face to let you know when you have any. I do get double notifications from the messaging apps that I sideloaded but that’s not anyone’s fault. The app drawer is fine, I like that I can scroll through it with the rotating bezel, but for watches without a rotating bezel I think Apple’s web of apps is a better UI choice.

The Tiles page is the X factor here. It’s a section of app “tiles” that are able to display information and give shortcuts to apps. It’s like widgets on your wrist! This feature is accessed by rotating clockwise on the bezel. Having things like the weather, your calendar, Spotify, or the calculator (the tips function is AMAZING) that easy to view and interact with is a big deal and makes it less likely that I’ll have to dive into an app every time I need to do something. The pill tiles Samsung added with OneUI 8 are super cool and make things more information dense. Keep working on that idea Samsung. I used to have all of my quick reference information on my watch face but with the tile system I can choose a different, prettier watch face.

I use a Pixel 8 with this watch. Keeping that in mind the companion app for this watch is borderline unusable. I ignore it as much as I can and loathe when I’m forced to deal with it. Nothing works, from the watch face downloader to the settings menu. The weather app can’t even remember what units I want my weather in! A 3rd party watch weather app has had no issues with this. I also have to be extremely careful that the phone app never forgets my watch. That’s because if it does and I have the repairing process doesn’t work unless I factory reset the watch. It’s pretty inexcusable and I hope Samsung fixes this in the future. If you own a Samsung phone and your companion app experience is different please let me know in the comments.

I’ve had some time to experience the operating system on my wife’s Oneplus Watch 3S. This watch uses a pretty stock version of WearOS. Its operating system has some major downsides compared to Samsung’s implementation and I think Google needs to orient closer to Samsung’s model of UX design. For example, that watch doesn’t let you close your own apps, instead insisting that it knows best and will shut them down automagically. That’s fucking stupid. Everyone knows how to manage their apps in the multi app menus included with their phones, the same system that Samsung uses on its watches. It lets *me*, not the watch, decide what software I want running. It even lets you see and manage what’s running in the background! Another example is the lower button assignments. Having a back button is extremely valuable. It lets you interact with the screen less and can reliably get you to where you were. In comparison the Oneplus Watch has a swipe that you have to do to go back, leaving the other button to be assigned to… something and using up an entire direction you can swipe in apps. When you’re using a device in this kind of way that’s not a good solution. The best solution though is adding more buttons. 4 button smartwatch when?

The State of the Industry and The Future

Smartwatches aren’t in a great place at this moment. Sales are down and every Apple Watch since the Watch 4 has looked almost exactly the same. I believe most of the industry has realized that their hardware is about as good as they can make it and there’s very little room to innovate. The only paths are to make your watch look different for style reasons, adding yet another health feature that half works and that no one was asking for, or increasing battery life. I also think there’s a fourth option of making the processor better, which would increase battery life and performance at the same time (see the Oneplus dual processor designs), but there hasn’t been much support for that by brands in the past.

I believe the answer to this problem is to go all in on software. These wrist computers are so capable and yet all of that power is being put to waste. Brands take the software as an afterthought that doesn’t need proper bug testing and developers are actively pulling their support of these platforms. That can’t happen. If it does, the smartwatch will cease to exist because we’ve decided to stop putting the smarts in the smartwatch. With proper support from product designers and app developers this segment has the potential to reinvent itself from “a health tracker that tells you when Mom calls” to a mini, cheaper phone for your phone. I envision devices in the future that wrap your wrist in a bendable screen, becoming a literally smartphone on your wrist. With proper software support that dream is more than achievable.

Conclusion

This is my favorite computer. It achieves so much in such a small form factor that it’s hard to fully describe. It’s been such a blast trying to get apps working on it and I hope it continues to be that way. If you’re looking for a recommendation on an actually modern smartwatch I’d recommend the Galaxy Watch 8 Classic. It’s got that upgraded processor and the rotating bezel that I oh so love. If you’re looking to save some money, the Galaxy Watch 7 44mm LTE can be had on Ebay for $120 and gives you the extra power of that processor. That’s all for now, if you have questions please leave them in the comments and I hope you have a great rest of your day!

Still trying to find my perfect watch. Decided to compare Coros Apex 4 46mm and Garmin Forerunner 970.

Previously I owned few Garmin models (Enduro 3, Tactix 7 AMOLED, Fenix 7 Pro) as well as Amazfit T-Rex 3 Pro and Suunto Run/Race 2.

I’ve both watches weared last few days and I really like both. Coros more about raw data and it has great MIP screen. Garmin has more expertise in the domain. Features are pretty same (Forerunner has flashlight)

I just recovered from leg injury and looking for a sport watch / companion for the next 2-3 years and going to:

1. Running 5/10km races

2. Swimming (indoor mainly)

3. 3-4 times per week - gym weight training

4. Cycling (roads, city)

5. Hiking few times per year (Poland)

6. A lot of walking

7. Also want to try Hyrox

Both models feels pretty solid (Titanium, Sapphire glass). Price not matter at this comparison. Just want to be sure I’ll have enough data to analyze results and do improvements. Both brands have good ecosystem of a various sport devices.

Did someone else face the same decision?

How do I remove this "Add AI watch face" screen despite my watch being connected to mobile?

Also, although I'm not sure(i haven't checked much) but it still shows even when It is being synchronised or not

It occurs temporarily, like time to time

I have to swipe to check the time on different page

It just gets Really annoying when this happens while on walk or something, when I can't touch the screen...

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