Suddenly my Gear S3 won't remotely connect

[dshrum84]

For no apparent reason, my watch has stopped remotely connecting to my phone. I've done the things that usually fix it. Turn the watch off, turn the phone off, connect via BT for a few minutes, anything to trigger the remote connection. Any other tricks that have fixed this for you guys before I soft reset the watch?

Gear S3 Frontier LTE from T-Mobile, HTC One M9.

 

[afblangley]

Sometimes disconnecting from BT works better in one direction vs the other. If you normally do it by turning BT off on the watch, do it the other way- leave the watch on and disconnect BT on the phone. Also, it can take a full minute or two for the watch to switch from standalone to RC mode.

I hope this helps. Good Luck!

 

[jrf1025]

Thanks afblangley. I've also tried disabling and re-enabling mobile data on the watch. I find that can also help restore the remote connection.

 

[dshrum84]

I've tried all of those multiple times. I really like the watch, especially now that I'm using Outlook for work and can know if I need to stop what I'm doing to deal with something at the job. If it becomes necessary to reboot every 6 weeks to restore basic functions things could get irritating.

 

[Jaycemiskel]

Really? Every 6 weeks is too much?

 

[dshrum84]

Yes. Redownloading 50-100 apps and watchfaces (more as they keep making new ones I like), putting them back in the order I want them in and going through every setting on every menu to restore it to the way I want it should not be necessary every 6 weeks. Especially to get one of the most basic things the watch should do to work. If I wanted to be bluetooth connected to the phone all the time I would have spent less money on the non-LTE variant of the watch.

If you use your computer every day and had everything set up just right, would 6 weeks in between "you have to hard reset the pc then reinstall and configure every piece of software" be ok?

I can't tell if it's something to do with T-Mo, the Digits beta, Samsung (expectedly, to be honest) not being fully cooperative with other manufacturers or a little of everything. Nonetheless, the basics shouldn't be problematic on a completely new thing in the marketplace. There's no need to reinvent the wheel every time a new company makes something that others have already made before.

 

[Jaycemiskel]

Yes. Redownloading 50-100 apps and watchfaces (more as they keep making new ones I like), putting them back in the order I want them in and going through every setting on every menu to restore it to the way I want it should not be necessary every 6 weeks. Especially to get one of the most basic things the watch should do to work. If I wanted to be bluetooth connected to the phone all the time I would have spent less money on the non-LTE variant of the watch.

If you use your computer every day and had everything set up just right, would 6 weeks in between "you have to hard reset the pc then reinstall and configure every piece of software" be ok?

I can't tell if it's something to do with T-Mo, the Digits beta, Samsung (expectedly, to be honest) not being fully cooperative with other manufacturers or a little of everything. Nonetheless, the basics shouldn't be problematic on a completely new thing in the marketplace. There's no need to reinvent the wheel every time a new company makes something that others have already made before.

Oh, you must mean reset. Rebooting usually refers to cutting the device off, then back on so that's what I thought you were talking about. A factory reset every 6 weeks would definitely be annoying.

 

[just_luc]

Was a cause or solution to this ever found? I'm having the same issue. I have the non lte version, but it used to connect remotely via WiFi when I'd leave my phone on the charger and step out of Bluetooth range. Now it just goes into standalone.. Very frustrating.

 

[dshrum84]

I haven't been able to isolate a cause. Since the reset it started doing it again but fixed itself after a power cycle.

 

[just_luc]

Power cycling doesn't help for me. Haven't been able to connect remotely in a few weeks.

 

[afblangley]

Power cycling doesn't help for me. Haven't been able to connect remotely in a few weeks.

Have you done a master reset (holding down power key then tapping it repeatedly) to restore it to factory settings? This combined with a fresh install (erase, reboot, reinstall) of Gear Manager on the phone, will fix anything that's not hardware related.

 

[strikeIII]

Just ran into this issue and a master reset of the S3 only fixed it.

 

[dshrum84]

And the adventure continues. After a few days, notifications stopped showing up on the watch while it was remotely connected. After a restart, notifications came back, but 2 days later it won't remotely connect again.

 

[afblangley]

I think reading this thread jinxed me. I'm constantly paired via RC and it stopped working. A soft reset fixed the problem. Its a little inconvenient, but our Samsung account keeps track of downloaded apps so restoration is fairly quick. Total time start to finish was about 10 minutes, including S Pay setup.

 

[Jaycemiskel]

I better stop reading then cause I haven't had that problem thus far

 

[keld]

Been having the same issue for a week, restarded the phone and watch still wouldn't connect but I just fixed it by going in the watch settings turning bluetooth then going in network settings and turning off everything (data and cellular) then turn back on data/cellular then bluetooth. On the phone open the Galaxy app at tap reconnect Gear and voila, at least it did it for me. I suspect that it was why my battery life wouldn't last a day.

 

[dshrum84]

After this weekend, I've now done 3 soft resets on my watch in 4 months because it stops remotely connecting. This in not acceptable.

 

[afblangley]

After this weekend, I've now done 3 soft resets on my watch in 4 months because it stops remotely connecting. This in not acceptable.

It's a bit of a hassle, but how big a deal is it to go down the My Apps list and reinstall everything. It only takes me about 15 minutes and that includes reconfiguring all the settings.

This is the leading edge of what's technically possible right now. AW can't do any better. Apple can't do better. Samsung is at the forefront.

 

[dshrum84]

Is this that common? I just had to do it again last night. Apparently all you have to do to trigger this is let either the watch or phone battery go below 5%.

If this is a normal thing that everyone on AW and Apple is trying to fix at the same time, I'll live with it. My question comes from the experience of watching Samsung try to fix problems that have already been dealt with in OSs for years now as though they just noticed them.

 

[Ca_lvn]

No lte here the other day I left my watch at home and went out and noticed the gear was RC so I'm guessing every thing but the phone would work on the watch? Thanks