Android ain't done until Samsung won't run? 9.0 Pie borks Gear watch app Android P may have been the smoothest and most public beta the world’s dominant phone OS has yet enjoyed, but it isn't without its issues. Bluetooth tweaks mean that Samsung's Gear watch app can't be used to configure a new smartwatch, The Register has discovered, with our testbed Pixel 2 repeatedly failing the procedure. …
I was until recently using an Huawei watch that required "WearOS" there were 3 updates in the 9 weeks I used the device and each and every update broke something fundamental. no amount of fiddling / unpairing / re-pairing would make those things work again. Thinking my watch was faulty I had it replaced, twice. nothing, the bog standard, least I expect I expect functionality of a smart watch could not be regained.
a lot of google stuff is excellent at what it does... WearOS is not one of them.
Android 9.0 broke hands-free calling in my car (and many other people's too), and despite being reported during beta, went to release in the same state.
Now plenty of people seeing the the problem for real, and none too pleased that something that could be considered a safety issue wasn't raised as a blocker.
You wonder if end user reported defects just get tossed in the bin at Google, and that it's only taken seriously if reported internally by testers. That's what seems to have happened here. (112272747)
I generally stay away from anything that is version x.0 ... Version n.0 of anything means that marketing thinks it is salable and the developers will be able to fix the bugs eventually - in real life we don't fix them, we just move them somewhere less obvious and make them harder to find. Which is why my handle here is Version 1.0
Great, another pile of crap that only offers 8-12 hours of battery!
What I'd like to know, how any of these watches do soooo bad on battery?
My Amazfit Stratos manage to last 7-9 day (has lots of power saving, such as scheduling bluetooth and airplane mode), and my Garmin lasts almost at long.
"Great, another pile of crap that only offers 8-12 hours of battery!"
It may well, but it doesn't have to. I've got a Ticwatch Pro which happily lasts more than 72hrs of "normal" use (telling the time, quietly notifying me of incoming emails/msgs that may require attention, monitoring my heart rate to recommend when another double espresso is required) on a full charge.
As to the subject.... there's no excuse as the Samsung Galaxy A3 2017 was one of the devices for which the various Android 9.0 "beta" releases was available. Any issues affecting Gear devices should have been obvious long before now.
Pixel 2XL running Android 9.0 (PPR1 180610.009), no issues with [i]any[/i] third-party apps.
Conspiracy theories aside, its just a bug with the Gear app setup. I rolled my Pixel 2 back from the last beta because the app crashed repeatdely when I tried to bond a Gear S2. Installed the OTA prod release of Pie when it came out, straight over the top, and both watch (which was now already setup under 8) and phone are working fine. Admittedly it's now gonna be faff breaking out ADB to downgrade to Oreo again if you want to try it, but...
"Meanwhile, Google has introduced a "convenience" feature that will alarm the security-conscious: connecting the user to a "trusted" Wi-Fi network without the user's knowledge."
This is what the Google WiFi Assistant has always done, it was in Android 8, I forget if it was in 7. The difference here is that Google added the ability to automatically kick WiFi back on when where it should be able to connect to an open network, whereupon it kicks on and should establish a VPN link. It'd kind of a data saver / convenience feature.
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