Hi friends,
i have some questions using the above standing watch.
I hope somebody can help me.
1.)
Best Fitness programm tracing HR and GPS (to snyc with strava)?
Any recommandations?
2.)
Connected the watch to this “bad phone app” wiiwatch2:
Notifications (WhatsApp, SMS / MMS…what ever) does not activate the screen.
I notice the vibration but the screen stays “dark”.
I need to activate the watch (by pressing the upper right button).
But i am not able to the e.g. hole WhatsApp Message…because i “only” see the first line of the message.
Any suggestions?
3.)
Google calendar will not sync.
While opening the calendar on the watch, i do not see any of my “dates”.
Any suggestions?
4.)
Receiving a phone call on my mobile phone, i notice the vibration but same with the messages, the watch does not activate its display.
I need to do this manually
Any suggestions?
5.)
Is there a possibility to track my sleep?
6.)
Is there a possibility to track frequently (by setting how often per day) measuring the HR?
I can’t answer all of your questions but I can help with some.
I replaced the default watch app with “Watch Droid” from the play store. You install “watch droid phone” on the phone and “watch droid assistant” on the watch. I had trouble connecting initially but I used the app “Bluetooth Auto Connect” to get the watch to use the “phonebook” profile for BT connection and that seemed to allow watch droid to connect.
Watch droid does a much better job of showing notifications, has settings to turn on the screen when a notification comes in. It also has the ability to reply to notifications but I have not tested that on the Optimus yet as it’s not a feature I really use.
As for google calendar you will need to have an internet connection on the watch either WiFi or BT tethering. To activate BT tethering just pull down the quick settings panel, long press on BT, then press the cog icon next to your phones name in the BT menu and tick the box for “internet access”. You may need to confirm internet access on the phone the first time.
Be aware that BT tethering uses a fair bit of battery on the watch, so leaving it on is a bit of a drain.
I have posted a thread (that is awaiting moderation since I’m new here) in the general discussion area, that covers how to make tethering activate only when the screen is on. I pretty much just followed a thread I found on XDA, so I will put a link at the bottom of this post to that thread.
Edit: It seems I’m not allowed to post links yet but the title for the XDA thread is " [Tutorial] Auto BT Tether - The Tasker Way" if you google that you should find the thread which also has a play store link to “Bluetooth Auto Connect”.
Another way to sync calendar is to download calendar from the play store and use that one. I use my Hope as a stand alone device (w/sim) and this works for me.
Unfortunately I have yet to figure out how to disable/remove the original app but the download will work. NOTE: They have the same icon:-( Good luck!
1.)
Best Fitness programm tracing HR and GPS (to snyc with strava)?
Any recommandations?
I do not use Strava, and when I just visited their site, frankly it seems limited what they allow to connect INTO Strava. (Strava Apps – There’s one for every athlete.)
You will probably want to use Google Fit to aggregate your activities, it does receive the data from the watch. I also use the Endomondo app from the Play Store which does sync to Fit. However, again, Strava doesn’t accept any data INTO itself from Fit except weight.
And finally it does appear you can manually export activities from Endonomdo to Strava in case you wanted to go through the trouble.
5.)
Is there a possibility to track my sleep?
I wish this were something included out-of-the-box, but it’s not. I have tried Sleep As Android (ex-Sleepbot) and Sleep Cycle. In my experience both of them drain too much battery with almost any setting. However I can occasionally get through the night with Sleep Cycle on the setting of microphone measurements and manual snooze.
Thanks a lot for this information
Can you please share your experience with your battery life im “smartwatch mode”
This would help a lot
Thanks
Regards
Hans
I have only had the watch for a bit over a week so I’m still working things out but I seem to get enough to get me through a day.
I have found that sometimes that battery drains fast in standby and other times its pretty good (anything between about 9 and 30 hours of standby time). I’m currently playing around with settings and battery apps to work out the main culprits.
I would be really thankful if you coudl share your results
I am not using this watch with sim and wifi on.
Only bt is active (to receive notifications)
I am with regards to battery life something about 2day (shorter when i am jogging…cause of gps and continiously HR tracking)
Thanks
mine too. the watch may be doing something it shouldn’t be doing at times? it kinda sucks.
but when it acts like it’s supposed to, I recon the battery could easily last 2 days, maybe even longer with only bluetooth on depending on what else you do with the watch.
btw , I cant get gmail( installed on the watch) app to show notifications.
any help would be highly appreciated
To get Gmail notifications directly from the app installed on the watch you will need to have an internet connection on the watch so that it can check for new mail.
You can use SIM, BT Tether or WiFi. Have not used a SIM with my watch so I can’t really comment on that but I know that both BT Tethering and WiFi drain the battery fairly fast. However if you don’t have one of these active then the watch won’t have internet and gmail won’t be able to update. To have BT tethering connect automatically when you turn on the screen have a look at my post about auto tethering, in the general forum.
If you remove the WiWatch app from your phone and switch to Watch Droid you will get better gmail notifications. Watch Droid includes much more of the email text, making its notifications far more useful than the stock app. It also lets you reply by voice, which worked really well for me when replying to SMS messages. I haven’t tried voice replies with email yet
I recently decided to factory reset my watch and install apps gradually so I could see when my standby life dropped significantly.
With no apps installed and BT off the watch lost 5% overnight (8hrs).
I have since been installing apps gradually and keeping an eye on the battery drain.
I now have BT on (connected to Watch Droid). My google account is active, play store auto updates are turned off. I have installed, Watch Droid assistant, Floating Toucher, Solid Explorer, BT Auto connect and Tasker.
Last night the watch lost 10% battery overnight (8hrs). I’m pretty happy with that. I still need to test what kind of battery life I get when I am actively using the watch, but I wanted to figure out the standby life first.
For reference before I did the factory reset I had a bunch of stuff installed and was losing 40% or more battery in that same 8hrs of the watch doing nothing. So a rogue app could eat a fair bit of power, it may be worth doing a factory reset and just installing 1 or 2 apps per day so you can see which ones are eating the battery.
Dont forget guys a lot of people that use gmail turn OFF auto sync as its usually a big battery drain and check manually once in a while ( i know its crazy ) . And yes notifications for gmail with watchdroid are great . I never seemed to get gmail notifactions to work without it .
The lowest battery drain would be just plain BT without internet tethering.
In experience it seems like WiFi and BT Internet tethering both use about the same amount of power (BT tethering may use a little more) and they both drain the battery fairly quickly.
I have not used a sim so I don’t know about mobile data.
Have you tried installing watch droid? It will pass notifications over BT from your phone, so you don’t need to have internet access on the watch.
@reichstein
No i do not have “watch droid” installed.
I am not familar with the pros of this programm (wiiwatch app is in my opionion an awful app, but the notification are forwared fine…)
I have some doubt installing “watch droid” will drain the battery “more” (because another active programm on watch)
I removed the wiiwatch app and switched to Watch Droid. I think watch battery is about the same but the phones battery life has improved since wiiwatch seems to be a big drain on the phone side.
Watch Droid consists of a phone app and a watch app. You use the phone app to set what notifications get shown on the watch and to configure the look of the watch app, plus a bunch of other stuff. It’s pretty configurable.
The watch app shows notifications with a large amount of text (pretty sure this post would fit) and you can set the size of the text to suit your vision.
The watch app also has a music control function that can control music playing on the phone.
It’s a very useful app, much better than wiiwatch. It’s in the play store, I recommend checking it out, you can always uninstall it if you don’t like it.
Just to touch on battery life again. I have now installed Universal Launcher, Google Fit and Ultimate rotation control and turned off Google sync. I also installed Quickpic (gallery), MX Player (video player) a few games and a bunch of watchfaces including some “.watch” type faces. This is on top of the apps I listed in my earlier post (about 7 posts up).
Last night while I slept the watch lost 13% (about 8hrs). I’m still pretty happy with this.
I am curious if my battery performance is in line with what other folks are seeing.
What sort of drain do you guys get overnight if the watch is just connected to BT and not being worn?
I never leave mine on during the night but as a example yesterday this is what i got . 7am until 10pm
No sim , gps , wifi
Bluetooth on
Universal on - brightness 50%
Raise on
Always time on
Universal launcher installed
Watch droid 9 installed
Used for notifications all day
Thor 4 duel