Anyone taken the plunge and installed AW 2.0 Preview on their watch yet? I just picked up a Huawei Watch at Best Buy and I'm installing the preview straight-away. Looking forward to experiencing what's new!
Of course, there's the usual disclaimer: it's a beta, don't install it if you don't know what you're doing or can't deal with bugs, etc.
NOTES:
Okay, so I've poked around with it some, and here's some notes for those who are considering this:
This is the first of 5 planned preview releases, so of course it's rough. I'd say that if you know what you're doing and how to flash it, it's fine to play with for a while, but I'm personally going to flash back to 1.4 until the next developer preview.
Of course, there's the usual disclaimer: it's a beta, don't install it if you don't know what you're doing or can't deal with bugs, etc.
NOTES:
Okay, so I've poked around with it some, and here's some notes for those who are considering this:
- It's slow. Not so-slow-it's-unsuable, but it's not smooth at all. Plenty of lag and stuttering UI changes.
- There's only 1 watchface. Tried installing a few others, but nothing is showing as selectable (hitting the + crashes for me). As stated in most reviews, you don't push and hold to change watchfaces and face options, you swipe in from either the left or the right. It seems odd to me that they'd make it such a prominent gesture to get to the face changer, but I then again I don't change faces very often. I'm guessing they're trying to mitigate the amount of times people have gone into the face changer when they're crossing their arms, but I personally don't like it.
- Here's something I do like: Notification settings are independent of the phone. I keep my phone on Do Not Disturb at work, and I'd really like my watch to still vibrate when I get a notification. Currently, the watch mirrors the settings of the phone, so the watch doesn't alert me when I have a notification. In 2.0, it does. (Yes, I know I can mute phone alerts and calls when the watch is connected, which works, but if I get too far away from my phone, it'll start making sounds again. Also, when I'm not at work, I prefer the phone to make sounds.)
- Not sure if it's just me, but the watch feels like it's running a little warmer than it was before installing 2.0.
- I do like using the button to go back globally, however, there's still times (like dismissing notifications) where you still swipe the old way, which is a little confusing.
- The new app launcher is pretty slick, but having just come from a Gear S2 Classic, I can't help but feel like it would work REALLY well with a twisting bezel. Perhaps that's coming down the pike from a manufacturer...
- Swiping down from the top gives a single page of quick toggles, instead of a single toggle per page. This is really nice, but it's missing Theater and brightness boost (brightness boost is replaced by a really handy brightness toggle). I'd expect theater mode to be worked back in since there's no real replacement for it.
- This should be no surprise, but some apps work and some don't. I wouldn't count on anything specific working, and some apps just lock up the system for a while.
This is the first of 5 planned preview releases, so of course it's rough. I'd say that if you know what you're doing and how to flash it, it's fine to play with for a while, but I'm personally going to flash back to 1.4 until the next developer preview.
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