General Problems with the Galaxy Watch4 so far....

[TheMystic]

Hello community,

I'm listing the problems I have faced/ still facing with the Samsung Galaxy Watch4. If you have a solution, please comment. If you have other watch problems, please mention them with solution, if available.

Much of the problems below started AFTER doing a factory reset.


1. If I make a call from the watch, the contact picture doesn't show up in the background. I don't think it was like this before doing a factory reset.

2. If I get a call on the watch, the contact picture is very blurry. This is after a factory reset. Before the reset, it was fine.

3. Galaxy Wear app on my phone frequently fails to sync watch's battery info on the app. Same is true of Smart Things app. I have noted some of my observations and potential solution here and here. But other things are mostly fine on the app.

4. Although this happened only a couple of times, it is still worth mentioning: organizing the apps inside the Apps section in Galaxy Wear app did not sync the changes to the App Drawer on the watch. All changes done simply vanished, and I had to redo everything again.

5. There is no built-in way to backup the watch faces downloaded from the Galaxy Store or Google Play Store. And without root, Android (including WearOS) doesn't support backing up app data. This is just very pathetic.

The watch faces (only the APKs, not the app data) can be manually backed up using a file manager app. But it must be sideloaded using ADB, something most users wouldn't be comfortable with.


Limitations/ Drawback

1. One can't unpair a watch without having to do a factory reset to pair again.

2. One should not delete the app data for Galaxy Watch4 Manager app on the phone. If you do, you'll have to factory reset the watch to pair it again with the phone.

3. One should not delete the app data for Google Play Services app on the phone. If you do, you'll have to factory reset the watch to pair it again with the phone.

4. Watch Faces (with very few exceptions) don't come up with import/ export of configurations. If a watch face is uninstalled, it must be setup all over again.


RELATED POSTS

You'll find more info and related links here:

Wear OS - Facts

Hello community! In this post, I am giving you info on some aspects of Wear OS, which you may or may not know. All the details presented are based on my experience with Samsung Galaxy Watch4 (WiFi model), running on Wear OS 3.x. So they may not...

forum.xda-developers.com

 

[blackhawk]

To unpair a network reset would do it...
Try clearing the system cache for any type of glitch.

 

[TheMystic]

To unpair a network reset would do it...
Try clearing the system cache for any type of glitch.

I meant if you unpair the watch from the Bluetooth devices section or do a network reset on the phone, you'll have to factory reset the watch to pair it again.

Clearing system cache didn't help with any of the problems reported above.

I think this battery related problem is caused by apps on the watch that need a companion app on the phone. I'm not sure about it yet.

 

[blackhawk]

I meant if you unpair the watch from the Bluetooth devices section or do a network reset on the phone, you'll have to factory reset the watch to pair it again.

Clearing system cache didn't help with any of the problems reported above.

That's very odd. It sounds like a default setting has been changed somehow. Lol, a factory reset is not a viable option. You're missing something.
Maybe a third party app.
Does Wearables have all it's many needed permissions?
Disable all global power management... destroyer of worlds.
Play with it, Android's wuv attention

 

[TheMystic]

That's very odd. It sounds like a default setting has been changed somehow. Lol, a factory reset is not a viable option. You're missing something.
Maybe a third party app.
Does Wearables have all it's many needed permissions?
Disable all global power management... destroyer of worlds.
Play with it, Android's wuv attention

Someone said it is for security purposes, although it wasn't immediately clear how. Since it is designed to be that way, there should be good reasons for it, even if I haven't figured that out yet. It is not a permissions issue or optimization issue.

I have quite a few (about 30) watch faces, and the thought of factory reset scares me away. So I am careful about how I play with it.

 

[blackhawk]

Someone said it is for security purposes, although it wasn't immediately clear how. Since it is designed to be that way, there should be good reasons for it, even if I haven't figured that out yet. It is not a permissions issue or optimization issue.

I have quite a few (about 30) watch faces, and the thought of factory reset scares me away. So I am careful about how I play with it.

Maybe uninstalling/reinstalling Wearables rather a reset. Sounds like another Samsung bug.
Lol, this N10+'s load is over 2 yo now. Androids should rarely need to be factory reset. One reason I like them so. Also why I avoid upgrades and updates once I have a fast, stable load.

 

[D0PEY]

Someone said it is for security purposes, although it wasn't immediately clear how. Since it is designed to be that way, there should be good reasons for it, even if I haven't figured that out yet. It is not a permissions issue or optimization issue.

I have quite a few (about 30) watch faces, and the thought of factory reset scares me away. So I am careful about how I play with it.

If you have a Samsung account you can actually back up your watch and all its data just like a phone and when you set up the watch again you can choose to recover from the backup. Its in your watch settings on the wear app.

 

[TheMystic]

Maybe uninstalling/reinstalling Wearables rather a reset. Sounds like another Samsung bug.
Lol, this N10+'s load is over 2 yo now. Androids should rarely need to be factory reset. One reason I like them so. Also why I avoid upgrades and updates once I have a fast, stable load.

The Galaxy Watch4 Manager app stores the pairing key. If you uninstall it or delete its app data, you'll have to factory reset the watch to pair with your phone (or any device) again.

 

[TheMystic]

If you have a Samsung account you can actually back up your watch and all its data just like a phone and when you set up the watch again you can choose to recover from the backup. Its in your watch settings on the wear app.

That backup is a useless thing. It only backups up your Quick Settings layout and a handful of System Settings. It doesn't backup any of the downloaded watch faces. And it doesn't backup watch configurations either.

 

[D0PEY]

That backup is a useless thing. It only backups up your Quick Settings layout and a handful of System Settings. It doesn't backup any of the downloaded watch faces. And it doesn't backup watch configurations either.

Well, that's bad design. I thought it did a full backup, must've imagined that. My apologies.

 

[jimweda]

Seems like the faces and their data are stored in the apps themselves. I was checking on that the other day and I would download 10 faces and go check the info under storage for the app and it would keep getting bigger in size. So, my question is how do you back up the app but not have it backup the apk instead. I can't even locate the physical app anywhere on the phone to try and back it up. Are the super top secret hidden or something? I'm stock android and have no way to root my phone. Has to be a way to at least do that right? Anyone?

 

[blackhawk]

Seems like the faces and their data are stored in the apps themselves. I was checking on that the other day and I would download 10 faces and go check the info under storage for the app and it would keep getting bigger in size. So, my question is how do you back up the app but not have it backup the apk instead. I can't even locate the physical app anywhere on the phone to try and back it up. Are the super top secret hidden or something? I'm stock android and have no way to root my phone. Has to be a way to at least do that right? Anyone?

See if SmartSwitch can back it up. Do Not use SmartSwitch to backup critical data though. It can be used to back Homepage and apps as well. Otherwise you will need to reload them.
There maybe a way using adb.

Always redundantly backup critical data including contacts to at least two hdds (copy/paste folders) that are physically and electronically isolated from each other and the PC. Otherwise you will likely lose the data eventually.

 

[jimweda]

See if SmartSwitch can back it up. Do Not use SmartSwitch to backup critical data though. It can be used to back Homepage and apps as well. Otherwise you will need to reload them.
There maybe a way using adb.

Always redundantly backup critical data including contacts to at least two hdds (copy/paste folders) that are physically and electronically isolated from each other and the PC. Otherwise you will likely lose the data eventually.

I'll give it a shot. I have a small raid set up that I use only for my phone well, because it is small and not useful for much else. Thanks.

 

[blackhawk]

I'll give it a shot. I have a small raid set up that I use only for my phone well, because it is small and not useful for much else. Thanks.

I would use multiple hdds that are isolated from each other so a near lightning strike, fire, trojan, whatever can't wipe out all the copies at once.