Recommend me a Wear OS watch!

IAH85

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Jun 28, 2019
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Recently returned to Android after 2 years in the Apple world. I'm currently using a Pixel 3XL.

Brand isn't important. I would like the following;

Ability to make/receive calls
Ability to send/receive texts
NFC
wireless charging
Waterproof (as in able to swim with it would be nice but not 100% necessary)

Would prefer to spend $200 or less if possible but would spend more for the right watch.

Thanks for the input!
 

N4Newbie

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Nov 15, 2012
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I've toyed with smartwatches, currently on my second. I won't bother to mention names because I don't think it matters much, especially if you are looking at Android Wear watches since they are all basically the same.

What I will say is: IMO, they just aren't worth the trouble or the cost. Ninety-nine percent of the time, your smartphone is going to be right there at your side anyway and it is far easier to do *anything* on your phone compared to on your watch.

Seriously. Spend that extra money on a nicer/better phone. You'll be glad you did.
 

kramer5150

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Jan 15, 2016
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Nope I can not recommend WearOS.

This is a copy-paste from my Amazon review for the fossil gen4 explorist I purchased in December 2018.

1st WearOS update, Mid January 2019
I took the watch off the over-night charge, it would not turn on. It was simply a blank screen. The WearOS app on my phone said it was trying to connect over bluetooth. I long press the power button hoping to boot-cycle. After a couple tries it did re-boot, where I was greeted with a ~30 minute OS download. During the update it was chugging through battery at a rate of 10% every ~7-8 minutes. I had to leave it on the charger throughout. At no point was I given the option to pause or stop the installation and resume later at a time of my choice. Furthermore I suspect it needed to maintain the wifi connection. Luckily it was a monday morning, and my schedule was wide open so I had time to waste. I do not know what would have happened if I had to leave the house wifi half way through the update procedure. Would it still be functional with half a download? Would it revert back to the last known OS version? Would it brick the watch?

2nd WearOS update, Mid Ferbruary 2019:
I was wearing the watch as I normally do during the work week and I noticed I stopped getting bluetooth notifications for text messages. Notifications worked fine for everything else. WearOS on my phone said it was bluetooth connected fine. I cleared cache on the phone, re-booted phone and watch... nothing changed, so I left it alone. Got home in the evening played around with it and realized there was another WearOS update on my phone waiting to download/install. It only took 10 minutes to download and install this time between the phone and watch. As before the watch needed to be plugged into the charger. What's disturbing this time is how a WearOS update waiting on standby to install managed to kill my text message notifications from android messages.

3rd WearOS update, Early March 2019:
I took it off the charger one morning and the bluetooth radio did not connect. Even though the watch bluetooth connectivity screen says connected to my phone. WearOS app on my phone only says "Connected"... not "Connected via bluetooth" like it normally does. I try and use the WatchMaker app to change watch faces over bluetooth and it results in a watch not connected warning.

At that moment I received a gmail message... and I get no notification for that on the watch.

I checked the Google playstore app and sure enough, there was another update waiting for me to download. It was a quick update, a few minutes and once I did that everything was fine.

4th WearOS update: March 8, 2019:
This one went fine and without a hitch. Nothing disconnected on the watch and notifications were uninterrupted. Minor update, took just a few minutes to download and install.

5th WearOS update: May 24, 2019
This one was a doozie. It took a good ~10 minutes to download and another 7-8 to install itself. Then it took another ~1 hour to "settle down". During that settle down period my phone ran hot to the touch and WearOS was guzzling the battery, about double the rate of my screen or the next highest consumer. That was not the worst part. The worst part was it could not maintain connection to my watch until later that evening. I have no idea what WearOS was doing but it clearly was struggling, choking and gagging on itself. Once it established connectivity and slowed down the battery my phone temperatures dropped back down to normal in the evening. BUT in the process it terminated permission settings with Android Messages. Even though I fully allow ALL permission settings on the watch and phone app. Fortunately another YT-er instructed me to toggle the permission settings OFF then ON with the watch... and this fixed it. All is well now.

For whatever reason, WearOS updates waiting to install, remotely disrupt operation of the watch. There is no warning, no heads-up, and many times no option to decline the update or delay it to a latter time of my choice. Out of the blue at random I have a non functioning watch. These are the very same things I did not like about Android Wear, 3-4 years prior. Clearly Google has made no progress improving the ecosystem maintenance.

For comparison-sakes I have owned an Amazfit stratos literally in parallel with the Fossil, both purchased mid Dec 2018. It received 3-4 updates for the watch or phone app. Over that time that went completely without incident. Amazfit app updated automatically and pushed itself over to the watch via bluetooth. At no point did the watch lose functionality, or if it did it was so seamless and quick enough that I didn't even notice.

So in all honesty I can NOT openly recommend any WearOS watch to just anyone. My opinion is its a tech-savy product that I think requires a tech minded mentality to maintain. Its not the ideal product for the general consumer. For the competent Android tech-mind, be forewarned its a LOT like the earliest days of Android, and its predecessor Android Wear... buggy, laggy, unreliable, and you need to be pretty tech-savvy to maintain the ecosystem. You have to find ways to keep the ecosystem running. It does not maintain itself very well at all.

UNLIKE your android phone however, updates waiting on standby will terminate basic functions of the watch. This is my biggest complaint.
 

evansgw

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Feb 10, 2011
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I am with everyone above, I can't recommend a WearOS watch at the moment.

I had a Sony SW3 it was fantastic. Then they stopped supporting it. I've currently got a Ticwatch E. It's laggy AF.

All I want is a standalone GPS watch with Google Music, that doesn't take forever to connect to GPS, doesn't take an age to recognize a swipe or gesture, and lasts 3+ hours on a run. Runkeeper keeps failing to record my runs, and I've used a ton of other apps.

If Garmin etc could let me use Google Music (I don't think they do, correct me if I am wrong), I'd switch in an instant.

At this point, I am well over WearOS.
 

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