Thoughts after 2 weeks

Okay, two weeks after receiving the LEM 14 I’m now beginning to question whether Android 10.7 is worth the effort:

  • battery drains in about a day, despite having nearly everything turned off - which is not the point of having 4GB of RAM and 64G of ROM.
  • Google Play Store apps are almost too tiny to use
  • Raise to wake is tediously slow
  • the built-in weather app doesn’t work on standard clock skins
  • phone and SMS notifications rely on checking, constantly, that the watch and phone are still connected via Watch Droid
  • unable to use BT Calling
  • did I mention the battery drains?

Can anyone tell me the advantages of this OS over WearOS, which is quick, slick and probably a bit easier to use? I really want to keep the watch - I like its design, its strap, its cameras - but it’s barely fulfilling the role of a wristwatch at the moment.

For me it’s the ability to load any app, I have many apps which are unavailable on Wear OS. And then the Phone/SMS and stand alone WhatsApp, Signal, Messenger etc, independent of having a phone nearby. I like to be able to ‘travel light’, i.e. leave phone at home and still have full connectivity.
Regarding the battery, your LEM14 has 1100mAh. I have the Kospet Prime 2 with 1600mAh and the Ticwris Max S with 2000mAh, so there are options which have more power, than the one you chose. Already from the Wear OS world, I know that battery is one of the most important factors - my Wear OS (LG Sport with 3G and SIM) lasted much shorter than my FAW watches, and with MUCH less functionality…
Yes, there are still limits to the FAW, but they are really getting better and better.
Screen wise, I last went for the Rectangular shape of the Ticwris Max S. It is still much smaller than a phone, but you can see all 4 corners and reach menu’s etc.
Surely it would be better with apps designed and sized for the smaller screen, but you would be left with a limited selection of apps, instead of the whole play store’s possibilities…
I still puzzles me why anyone would use bluetooth calling… If you have the phone within bluetooth distance, why not simply pick up the phone ? or use a bluetooth headset with the phone…
But every ones different and have different needs, I know :slight_smile:

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Thanks for the reply. I did consider the Prime 2 but I thought the outsized screen would just enable people to point me out in a crowd and laugh … :wink: My ex laughs at the size of the LEM anyway. :frowning:

I last had a Fitbit Sense 2 with a square screen, but it was bought second-hand (a charity auction, actually) and it lasted 8 months then bricked itself. I liked the screen but again the battery life was nothing to shout about - the same with the Ticwatch E that I’d had before.

As for BT calling … I rent rooms in a large house, with the kitchen downstairs and my living room above it. Occasionally I’ve been down in the kitchen (or elsewhere) and my phone’s been upstairs. I got a notification on the Fitbit (and occasionally on the LEM) that there’s a phone call, but I couldn’t answer it: the only action was to reject it, or to race upstairs. Neither ideal!

So I’m beginning to realise that battery life is important to me. I spend a lot of time sitting in front of my PC but I don’t really want to have my watch draped over the battery bump I bought (separately) just so the battery doesn’t run out at 9 o’clock. Incidentally, the battery connector that comes with the LEM 14 is pretty terrible. Supposed to be magnetic … I’d call it ‘a bit clingy’ - it comes off if you breathe too heavy.

Currently looking at other watches on YouTube - many with 7 to 21 days battery life - the Honor Magic 2, a Huawei, I may have to splash out again …

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Food for thought: I have a SIM in my watch, and instead of my phone going to voice mail when unanswered, it forwards the call to my Watch. I don’t know your requirements, but that might be a solution for you too.

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Alessio, see my reply … !

Do you have A sim installed? If not some watches will glitch and constantly be looking for service even with no sim. So try turning on airplane mode and then turning Bluetooth or wifi on if needed. This will keep it from searching for service if it has no sim installed

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If you have a headset in you can still answer on the watch and be talking via the headset. Worked well for me when I didn’t have the sim yet

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Hi - no, I don’t have a sim installed. I did turn on airplane mode for a while, but the point of having Bluetooth available is that the phone gets notifications of mail and phone calls. I don’t carry my phone around the house with me all the time, so I want the watch to tell me whether I have a call or a text or an email. The Ticwatch, for all its faults, did this flawlessly. Thanks for the suggestion, though.

No, I don’t want to walk around the house wearing a headset. I’d feel very strange. I’d have to put it on every time I left my sitting room (1st floor) to go down to the kitchen (ground floor) or to the toilet (2nd floor).

Thanks again - I’m not trying to be difficult!

You can have airplane mode on and still turn Bluetooth and wifi on. That was it still functions normally but isn’t trying to search for cell service

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Sounds like you need a sim installed so you can forward your cell if unanswered🤷🏼‍♂️ or see if you can get a VPN number to forward to when on wifi

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This is an interesting idea but of course I have no idea whether it will work or not. But do you see how we’re having to make workarounds for A10 to work how we want? I suppose it’s the same for all watch OS’s.

That’s how I use my watch that doesn’t have a sim. You can even put in power saving mode and turn on Bluetooth you will still get notifications. My Genesis only gets 18 hours normally. But get 36 hours easily this way and still get Bluetooth notifications. With universal launcher you can still access all apps normally too. So nothing really changes if you don’t have a sim card. Other then it last longer

Okay, I’ve done as you suggested - airplane mode on, wifi and BT on. It seems strange to me that airplane mode doesn’t automatically cancel these operations and make them unusable when it’s on.

I don’t see how that’s a work around if your cell didn’t have a sim in it either you would want to do the same thing. All my kids tablets are in airplane mode with wifi on. This seems pretty normal to me

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If you turn airplane modr on when they are already on then they will turn off. That doesn’t mean you can’t just turn them back on :tipping_hand_man:t3:

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True - but I seem to be having to make lots of changes to how the OS works to get it to do simple things like notify me of a text or a phone call. Anyway, it’s set up now, so thanks for your suggestions and I’ll keep an eye on the battery life. I’ve started running the Always on Amoled again so that I have an always-on screen (another adaptation in A10!) and I guess that might drain the battery more quickly now. But I dislike having a black screen on my wrist and then waiting when I raise my wrist for the screen to light up - if it does. And touching a button to show the time takes me right back to the 1980s and the first red-led watches! I thought we’d come further than that in 40 years …

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The twist the wrist in universal launcher seems to be pretty responsive especially over the stock lock. I fell the always on AMOLED app seemed to use a lot of power. Using the always on feature built into universal launcher seems to use much less battery

I tried UL but felt the twist the wrist feature was not really any quicker. I couldn’t get the always-on feature to work, if I remember correctly.