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TheDK
Jun 5, 2009
re: OnePlus Watch 2 announced at MWC

I am stupid and ordered one.

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bull3964
Nov 18, 2000

DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.


Yeah, I did too.

They give $50 off for ANY device trade in (spoiler alert, if you do the "any condition" trade in with OnePlus, they don't actually ask for you to send the device, they just give you a link to order a recycling label.)

I also paid a buck for the $50 off coupon for preorder. So I'm getting one for $211.99 shipped.

Only thing is if I'm going to get it in time, leaving for vacation on the 7th and the initial order page says delivery on the 7th for expedited and 8th for free shipping. But when I checked out, it changed to the 6th for estimated delivery with free shipping.

v1ld
Apr 16, 2012

That was useful to know on the hybrid processor stuff that's coming into WearOS.

Dunno if this is the right topic for it, but do we know if Samsung's new Ring has GPS/step count support? The latter would be fine even if done mechanically. None of the stuff on it mentions either.

Would be happy to give up the watch if the ring can do biometrics as accurately as a watch. The phone is a good enough display for me and always around or on me anyway.

bull3964
Nov 18, 2000

DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.


No idea, it's still very limited information.

The Oura Ring tracks steps, so it would seem like it would be missing a pretty big thing if it didn't. Step tracking is like table stakes now.

I doubt it has GPS though, too small.

bull3964
Nov 18, 2000

DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.


Seems like a constant refrain with this watch is "I got 4 full days and still had 20% left when I put it on charge" which is pretty drat nice.

Some reviewers are dinging it for lack of ECG, but that's not something I care too much about as it has a very limited use case. One annoying thing is I saw it mentioned it has no transfer device functionality which I thought was standard in WearOS 4.

bull3964
Nov 18, 2000

DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.


Here's all the nuts and bolts about the hybrid stuff.

https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2024/02/wear-os-hybrid-interface-boosting-power-and-performance.html

CLAM DOWN
Feb 13, 2007




Okay I'm trying again. Factory reset my Pixel Watch 2, uninstalled/reinstalled the Pixel Watch app on my 8 Pro, started from total scratch, and I still have the same problem. Google Messages notifications do not vibrate/popup on the watch. They don't show the "new notification" dot on the bottom of the screen. If I swipe to see notifications, they're there! But there's no indication of a text arriving.

It's incredibly annoying how broken this is, and I have zero clue why. I've checked every setting on both the watch and phone.

bull3964
Nov 18, 2000

DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.


At this point, I almost think it's something wrong with the messages app on your phone if it survived a factory reset. I can't say I've ever had that issue and I've moved my Pixel Watch 2 between 3 different phones.

CLAM DOWN
Feb 13, 2007




bull3964 posted:

At this point, I almost think it's something wrong with the messages app on your phone if it survived a factory reset. I can't say I've ever had that issue and I've moved my Pixel Watch 2 between 3 different phones.

This is exclusively a Pixel Watch problem too, my Garmin works fine. I don't get it. Here are my Google Messages settings:




(blanked out spots are just people I've set as "priority" conversations so I see their display pic in the notification bar)

Vagrancy
Oct 15, 2005
Master of procrastination

The Health Connect integration GIF creates more questions than answers on how well it actually works in practice. The Health Connect tag on the Step goal suggests that its not completely silo'd and some Fitbit rings can be closed via Health connect, yet said Step Goal count is less than half of the shown native Fitbit tracker count and the Me tab HC sections Oura ring count. I'll be optimistic and chalk it up to it being fake data for their marketing and not that Google's built from the ground up replacement also managed to recreate Fit's data latency issues. Guess we'll find out since Google will probably start strongarming companies like Niantic to switch since the old Google Fit system is due to be shut down this year,


CLAM DOWN posted:

(blanked out spots are just people I've set as "priority" conversations so I see their display pic in the notification bar)

Is there a Notification sound set within those custom conversation channels (which I assume are the ones not working)? Unlike non-Google platforms WearOS abides 100% to Android "law" and only vibrates if theres a sound set or the vibrate toggle for the channel is on (which corresponds internally to "IMPORTANCE_DEFAULT" ranking). Notifications which don't make a Sound/Vibrate are "IMPORTANCE_LOW", which by default don't trigger the Notification dot (and you don't get a choice to switch it back on with a watch)

EDIT: Actually looked at your second screenshot and saw the "None". Maybe Google Messages has a bug where they're not explicitly adding vibration to the Incoming messages notification channel (the Vibration toggle only controls whether a notifications attached vibration patterns can go through) and nobody noticed because their dev team all have their phones on vibrate 24/7, so they're getting the automatic "Notification sound -> Vibrate" vibration.

If that's the case setting the Default notification sound back on will fix it.

Vagrancy fucked around with this message at 07:37 on Feb 27, 2024

bull3964
Nov 18, 2000

DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.


Vagrancy posted:

The Health Connect integration GIF creates more questions than answers on how well it actually works in practice. The Health Connect tag on the Step goal suggests that its not completely silo'd and some Fitbit rings can be closed via Health connect, yet said Step Goal count is less than half of the shown native Fitbit tracker count and the Me tab HC sections Oura ring count. I'll be optimistic and chalk it up to it being fake data for their marketing and not that Google's built from the ground up replacement also managed to recreate Fit's data latency issues. Guess we'll find out since Google will probably start strongarming companies like Niantic to switch since the old Google Fit system is due to be shut down this year,


It's been interesting to watch the incremental improvements of health connect, but there's still a lot of weirdness.

Samsung health seems to have no issues anymore bringing in heartrate from fitbit. So, when I wear my Pixel Watch, the heartrate readings end up in Samsung Health pretty consistently.

Workouts tracked in Fitbit also did a pretty good job of showing up in Samsung Health.

Sleep is a mixed bag. It nearly always has the correct "time in bed" from Fitbit in Samsung Health, but only sometimes imports all the sleep stages. I'm not sure what the rhyme or reason is for that.

Steps, despite Samsung Health having access to read steps from Health Connect, it's not igesting them. Fit manages to have my combined steps from Fitbit and Samsung Health pretty consistantly, but Samsung Health won't show the fitbit steps.

So, since Samsung Health has been pretty unreliable about bringing all the metrics together, my hope is that Fitbit will do better. But I agree, there are questions. Is it only blending health connect data with fitbit data to display, or is it actually ingesting it fully and making it a part of your fitbit stats that survive beyond the device? I know Fit does. I can open up fit on any of my other devices and see the blended Health Connect metrics from whatever combo of devices I'm using at the time and historically.

What I was hoping for from a Galaxy Ring was something that would track steps and heart rate unobtrusively to put into health connect while I was wearing a my Garmin watch or some other normal watch. I may end up going down the Oura ring route or I may just dust off my old Galaxy Fit 2 to wear on my other wrist in those cases because it's even smaller than my Charge 5.

Finally, I don't know why I care so much since I've never onces really done anything with the metrics.

bull3964 fucked around with this message at 16:18 on Feb 27, 2024

lostleaf
Jul 12, 2009

So does this mean, old watches like the galaxy watch 5 or 6 will get battery improvements?

bull3964
Nov 18, 2000

DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.


lostleaf posted:

So does this mean, old watches like the galaxy watch 5 or 6 will get battery improvements?

Hard to know. The watches certainly have lower powered co-processors to offload some tasks (and do things like provide a low power time only mode) but I have no idea what the hardware requirements are to do something like this and if the whole package layout has to be done a certain way to get everything all wired up correctly.

Cynically, I think even if they could, they wouldn't as it would remove a reason to upgrade to the Galaxy Watch 7 or 8.

I'm starting to get an impeding sense of dread from Samsung's wearable ecosystem as I think it's ripe for them to do a cash grab with subscription services. They talked up AI enhanced metrics at unpacked and I'm really doubting those upgrades are coming for free.

bull3964 fucked around with this message at 17:30 on Feb 27, 2024

CaptainSarcastic
Jul 6, 2013



CLAM DOWN posted:

This is exclusively a Pixel Watch problem too, my Garmin works fine. I don't get it. Here are my Google Messages settings:




(blanked out spots are just people I've set as "priority" conversations so I see their display pic in the notification bar)

Maybe try turning on "Pop on screen?"

My other thought is that another device is"stealing" notifications - if you're logged into the same account on another device and it is alerting but your watch isn't. I've noticed a serious lag between when which devices get notifications when they're all getting the same notification, like a Google Keep alarm. Maybe something like that? :shrug:

CLAM DOWN
Feb 13, 2007




Thanks for the tips all of you. Last night, I tried modifying the notification settings, popup did nothing, but when I went to the notification sound setting which said "none" for Google Messages, it showed this:



I changed it to "default (none)" and it loving started working. Messages notifications started working on the watch!!!

Fast forward to this morning. I changed nothing else. It stopped again, broken again. SIGH. There's clearly a bug here of some kind that I'm guessing I can't fix short of a factory reset of my phone which I just don't want to do right now.

loving hell this is weird.

lostleaf
Jul 12, 2009

bull3964 posted:


Cynically, I think even if they could, they wouldn't as it would remove a reason to upgrade to the Galaxy Watch 7 or 8.


That's what I thought as well. That's too bad since that just means I'm going to wait to buy a watch with the improved battery life. The OnePlus 2 is appealing but I'm looking for a watch that's as light and flat as possible. Something along the lines of watch 6 but with better battery life.

bull3964
Nov 18, 2000

DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.


Report is that there will be a 45mm Pixel Watch 3 option. FINALLY.

https://9to5google.com/2024/03/01/45mm-pixel-watch-3-pixel-buds-pro-2/

hark
May 10, 2023

I'm sleep

bull3964 posted:

Report is that there will be a 45mm Pixel Watch 3 option. FINALLY.

https://9to5google.com/2024/03/01/45mm-pixel-watch-3-pixel-buds-pro-2/

I know this isn't really the thread for it, but just reminded me because of other parts of that article: the pixel buds-a version fuckin sucked. I got the original buds, they were amazing. Got the a version for free with something else I bought and they were not nearly as nice. Haven't tried the pro ones but I have a sneaking suspicion they're just really similar to the originals, but more expensive.

bull3964
Nov 18, 2000

DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.


The pros are really good. The ANC isn't quite as strong as some of the bigger players in the market, but they are comfortable. I've taken them on trips instead of my Sonys a few times.

bull3964
Nov 18, 2000

DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.


OnePlus Watch 2 has arrived. Pairing process went smooth enough, just charing and updating now. Feels nice and premium in the hand.

bull3964
Nov 18, 2000

DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.


Some more impressions. Screen is nice. I think all the reviewers bellyaching over the "rotating crown" that does nothing are idiots because the knurling is so subtle so it's very hard to even tell that it's rotating unless you otherwise knew. To be clear, being annoyed that there is no rotating crown functionality is one thing and a valid complaint. The issue is that all the reviews painted it as some big confusing thing "the crown rotates, but it does nothing!" You literally cannot tell that it rotates and had someone not told me it does, I probably wouldn't have noticed. You have to be looking at the watch sideways a few inches from your face to see the mm's worth of knurling move.

The thing isn't vibrating on Gmail notifications. At this point, I feel this is some rite of passage for every WearOS device as I've seen this bug time and time again. The notifications come in, you get the dot showing they are there, but no vibration. Other notifications are vibrating though. It doesn't seem to matter if you have the Gmail app installed or not.

The haptics really aren't that strong unfortunately so I could see it being easy to miss a notification when they do vibrate. It's not TERRIBLE, but I have devices that are much stronger.

The thing is fast. You get really no indication that it's switching between two different operating systems under normal circumstances.

OHealth is pretty bare bones, but it's functional enough. You can even use it without signing into a OnePlus account if you so choose.

I've had it off charge for 3.5 hours and it's down 13% in battery. At that rate, it's not reaching 100 hours, but I have AoD on as well and I've been fiddling with it a lot. Can't really judge battery on the first charge.

It does not have pass through touch functionality like the Pixel Watch 2 meaning that if you don't have raise to wake turned on, your first touch just wakes the device and then you have to perform your action. The Pixel Watch 2 actually allows you to leave raise to wake off and recognizes a swipe or interaction with complication even from a sleeping screen and wakes up and carries out the action.

The Power Saver mode is super super impressive. Now I obvously don't know how much this really extends battery life (if it can reach the 12 days) but the experience is surprisingly feature rich. Using one of the OnePlus watch faces, the face doesn't change at all. All the complications I have on it still work (Weather, Heart Rate, Steps). You can still swipe through the tiles (though interaction with some will be impossible since it can't run the app). Notifications still come though, you just can't reply. However, there is still some two way communication (I was able to delete a Gmail message, not just dismiss the notification, actually delete the message from the watch). All the health metrics are still recorded. Again, super impressive and it's a mode I could see using quite a bit. It really retains the look and feel of the watch and all the tracking while only cutting out full app support. Only downside is you have to reboot to exit it and no option for AoD (which makes sense for a power saver mode). I'm going to be on two 5 hour flights tomorrow and I'm really struggling to think why I wouldn't switch over to this mode during the flights to save battery.

I'm actually starting to wonder about the broader strategy in including this functionality within WearOS itself. I mean, think about it. Google has Fitbit. Samsung has Galaxy Fit. So...reading between the lines, what if the Pixel Watch 3 has a "Fitbit only" mode that turns it into a fitbit to save power. Samsung could do the same and have a low power fitness mode that apes the functionality of a Galaxy Fit. Both could do this while retaining the look and feel of WearOS when in these modes since tiles and watch faces can run on the low power OS.

bull3964
Nov 18, 2000

DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.


Well, it's now at 44 hours since my last full charge of the OnePlus Watch 2. I left my house at 7:30am Thursday with it, traveled for like 15 hours to get to Hawaii, did sleep tracking and did sight seeing all day in Honolulu and the watch is at 43%. This is with AoD and lift to wake on. So, it looks like it can hit around 70 hours with AoD on.

bull3964
Nov 18, 2000

DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.


I took my OnePlus Watch 2 on my 10 day trip to Hawaii.

First the good stuff. The battery is the real deal. I went a bit over 70 hours with AoD on after I left before I got below 20% from the time I left home. Charging is also similarly fast. After about a half hour of charging, I was back up above 80%. The fact that the charging puck does not have an built in cable is a game changer for travel. So much better for packing and makes it easy to use the same charger at home and travel. I guess it's marginally easier to lose as a result, but the convenience outweighs that.

No real issues with connectivity to my Pixel 8 pro. Notifications came through just fine other than Gmail notifications not vibrating the watch as I noted earlier. I feel like all my watches have had that bug at one point or another so I'm hoping it will eventually go away.

The watch has the right sense of weight without feeling heavy and the display was easy to read under all conditions. I used it for contactless payments without issue as well. The NFC antenna seems to be pretty good and near the top of the watch so it's easy to get aligned to the POS terminal. I also didn't have any issue with the alarm going off to wake me up which I was a little worried about due to the hybrid system.

Now to the bad. Unless you just care about step count and background heart rate tracking, this device is next to useless. Granted, I didn't try any workouts on it, but it didn't seem to automatically detect extended waking intervals like my Galaxy Watches do after 10 minutes. Several times I got notifications that I hit step goals or calorie burning goals only to have a notification the next day that I didn't hit any goals for the previous day and I should try better this day. Sleep tracking was hit or miss. Even if I'm not looking at sleep stage accuracy, some days it just didn't register sleep or only registered like an hour of sleep for the prior night. This is despite the fact that I put it into sleep mode when I went to bed which should give the watch a pretty specific hint that I'm going to sleep. Now, after I got back, all of the sleep metrics are time shifted 6 hours since I changed time zones. That's just sloppy. Neither Fitbit nor Samsung health make that mistake, sleep periods remain localized to the time zone the sleep occurred in. When I went to Iceland, my sleep period didn't get shifted 5 hours back when I got home when my Watch 5 Pro tracked sleep there. But now, all the sleep periods that the OnePlus Watch 2 did track in Hawaii now have their times starting 5-6am and ending 12-1 pm. This also throws off the sleep score since it now things I'm napping for some of those periods since it was during the day.

I also noticed that the watch goes into "hibernation" mode during the night which is similar to the dedicated low power mode and requires a reboot to exit from. Most nights, I didn't notice it because I think it exits it on its own before you wake up, but one time I noticed the watch on the OnePlus logo and throught it had crashed and rebooted on its own.

So, the thing is not without its bugs. The battery life and performace are rock solid, some of the best that's out there for WearOS. The build quality is similarly good, being a nice size and substantial without feeling overly chunky and heavy. The smartwatch portions of it work as well as any other WearOS watch as well. It's just the health and fitness tracking stuff that's bad and I think it may be the worst one of the bunch out there right now for those things.

hark
May 10, 2023

I'm sleep
Is there a specific device (besides the whoop strap) that reliably and accurately tracks sleep?

bull3964
Nov 18, 2000

DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.


The Pixel Watch is pretty much the best wrist based wearable available to Android and rivals the Apple Watches.

teethgrinder
Oct 9, 2002

What do Apple Watches do that the Samsung ones don't?

CLAM DOWN
Feb 13, 2007




if I record a walk/bike/hike/etc on a Pixel Watch 2, is it possible to export the KML file of that activity? I can't find anything in the Fitbit app for this.

bull3964
Nov 18, 2000

DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.


teethgrinder posted:

What do Apple Watches do that the Samsung ones don't?


Be accurate?

Seriously though, the sleep stage tracking on the Galaxy Watches against a known good dedicated sleep tracker as well as heart rate tracking during vigorous workouts compared to a chest strap are only marginally ok.

Apple is working some amazing filtering on their heat rate data to reject outlier bad readings and only things using Fitbit algorithms on the Android side come close.

Wrist based tracking of anything is incredibly error prone and you need good false reading rejection to get a clean and data stream and Samsung just haven't cracked that nut yet. It's good enough to be mostly usable, but just isn't as accurate as the leaders in the space.

bull3964
Nov 18, 2000

DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.


CLAM DOWN posted:

if I record a walk/bike/hike/etc on a Pixel Watch 2, is it possible to export the KML file of that activity? I can't find anything in the Fitbit app for this.

If you go to Fitbit on the web, you can export a TCX for an activity. That may have all the data you are looking for, but I haven't really gone into it.

CLAM DOWN
Feb 13, 2007




bull3964 posted:

If you go to Fitbit on the web, you can export a TCX for an activity. That may have all the data you are looking for, but I haven't really gone into it.

That's actually a lot better because TCX files can contain biometric (ie. HR) data as well as the GPS tracks. Thank you!!!

bull3964
Nov 18, 2000

DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.


From what I gather there's a bug in fitbit that has existed for years that unless the activity has GPS data in it, the TCX actually is pretty much empty. So, it works for GPS tracked activities, but for non-GPS ones you don't get any usefal data.

v1ld
Apr 16, 2012

Thinking of putting in a smart lock. Would be good to have one that works off contact with watch/phone, WearOS & Android only. But I also want an old fashioned key that can be used with the deadbolt if something goes wrong with power/firmware, whatever - aware of the 9V battery override feature, but that won't help with rogue firmware.

The Nest x Yale seems like it ticks all the Watch/Android boxes, but has no hardware key.

Do y'all know of any well made locks that fit the bill? Watch control would be fantastic, hence why I'm asking here.

bull3964
Nov 18, 2000

DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.


To my knowledge, there's no NFC based house unlock with any Wear device. Maybe that will come later with rumors of Google adding UWB to the Pixel Watch 3.

teethgrinder
Oct 9, 2002

Yay, new Watch 5 Pro update!

*checks notes*

Feature: display health information on Samsung TV

and a security patch

bull3964
Nov 18, 2000

DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.


Yeah, same update on Watch 6 too.

Rumors are heating up about the Watch 7. There appear to be 3 variants this time, suggesting a Standard, Classic, and Pro model (or alternatively an FE model rather than Classic or Pro.)

There are also rumors that Samsung is considering going square for some of the lineup (which I really wouldn't be on board with, at least not across the line.)

More storage and more RAM and rumored that we may finally see a significant SoC upgrade since the lineup started which Samsung is in dire need of because the Pixel Watch 2, Oneplus Watch 2, and TicWatch Pro 5 kinda embarrass the whole Galaxy Watch line in performance.

Hopefully we'll see the hybrid system implemented like the OnePlus Watch 2.

That said, I'm getting less excited for the new Samsung Watch releases YoY as they don't really seem to be adding anything significant. I would like a pro with more recent internals and the larger screen of the 6 series, but I doubt I'll replace my 6 Classics with a 7 Classic unless something really huge changes.

I'm mainly worried they are going to go 2nd paid tier in Samsung Health and all the AI analysis they are talking about is going to end up behind a paywall.

teethgrinder
Oct 9, 2002

I mean, I'm happy with my 5 Pro and will likely use it until it falls apart, like my 3 Frontier eventually did. (The backing glue decayed, and/or maybe the battery expanded ... classic Samsung.) But that 3 was getting steady updates on Tizen and performance improvements even.

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v1ld
Apr 16, 2012

That's where I am with my Watch 4 Pro - don't see a real need to upgrade it unless there's a big jump in health monitoring capabilities (by any manufacturer).

I got the watch with a Galaxy Flip and then used it with a Galaxy Fold. Was working fine with the Pixel Fold, but recently started getting alerts that the watch can't be backed up unless I install the Samsung Smart Switcher app - which I do not plan to do. Don't really care if anything on the watch is backed up - it's a pane of glass that's supposed to display information from elsewhere as far as I'm concerned.

The need to create ecosystems for themselves is a real problem in this space. Every single player is at it, balkanizing the user experience.

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