Am I asking for the impossible? Need your expertise.

[Jim 777]

Little long I know, I just want to make sure I give as much accurate info.

I just got my first smart watch, a little treat I got myself with a little tax return. It's a Asus Zenwatch 3 and so far I'm really liking it. After looking at, trying on, reading about, and determining what I want from a SW, I think I made the right choice. WIth really liking different styles of watches, it's no wonder I'm changing up the face everyday.

I have the new Pixel XL and I've been getting it the way I like things as I put the Droid Turbo to pasture, but the watch has been disrupting things and I have spent more than a few days trying different settings, permissions, etc to get it, but I'm finally ready to ask for your help.

Here's the little details: I don't want to talk to my watch, no SIM card, but more of a BT extension of my phone. Notifications at a glance are huge for me at work, instead of reaching down, digging phone out of holster, waking it up, unlocking, and so forth. This part works great. I'm not writing texts or emails at this point so I'm not interested in that. Where most of my frustration lies, is the audio and BT relation.... I think.

Example:
First, "The Threesome" - I listen almost exclusively to Pandora in the car, as the Alpine deck has a Pandora "app" on it. Usually when I get in the deck pairs with the phone (there are 3 icons that show: battery level, signal, and BT) and if on Pandora, it starts the app on the phone automatically and begins to play. Phone call comes in and the music pauses, rings through the speakers and I can speak normally as the little mic was installed with the deck near the rear view mirror.

Now that the watch is in play, only one of the icons shows and it doesn't connect, at least not enough hto do anything. When I look under the BT settings on the phone it says both are connected. But I have to tap disconnect on the watch, usually a few times, to try and get a full connection to the deck. Once it does, 3 icons and music plays.

Second, "You Make the Call" - When a call comes in, and I don't get a lot but still, I answer the call and it seems that there is no one there. What has been happening is that the audio would be connected to the watch and I'd have to manually go and change the listening preference to "phone". PITA! I believe I may have figured this one out through permissions (I've only tested it twice) but I throw it out because someone may understand the fix much better and tell me if I"m creating a problem else where. I went to the Android Wear app in settings on the phone, then permissions, and turned off permission to "phone." Also in the BT settings, the little gear icon next to Zenwatch 3, in there I unchecked the option for sharing phone.

Lastly, "The Fat Lady Sings" - a couple little things, not really issues but tenacity being what it is and all. I'm not really "into" fitness but when something is there available to use, I may want to use it. The watch came with Zen Fit and I turned on Google Fit so they are connected. Is there a way to "teach" the app what is walking and what is not? Like when I woke up this morning, it said I'd walked 80 steps. Now I haven't confirmed this, but I'm pretty sure I don't walk in my sleep and it said I slept for the same hours I really did. Or are this devices not specifically made for fitness tracking, not very accurate?

BT? Wifi? Neither? - Do I have to manually click on the wifi settings in the watch to connect? I noticed while looking for something as I was writing this post, that the BT was not connected and WOULD NOT connect. So I'm wondering if that's because of a wifi connection? In the Zen Manager app and the Android Wear app, they both say connected even when the BT doesn't appear to be,

Thanks for help with these.

 

[Sajo]

All I can say for tonight is that I have never had any of those issues with my LG G Watch or Moto 360 Sport. Hopefully someone more familiar with a Zen Watch can offer some tips and help.

Sent from my XT1650 using Tapatalk

 

[Jonny Kansas]

Howdy! I've got an LG Watch Urbane, so I can't speak a whole lot on the Zen exclusive features/apps, but I'll do my best to try and help here. I do have a Pixel XL, so at least the phone part will be the same for us.

First, "The Threesome" - I listen almost exclusively to Pandora in the car, as the Alpine deck has a Pandora "app" on it. Usually when I get in the deck pairs with the phone (there are 3 icons that show: battery level, signal, and BT) and if on Pandora, it starts the app on the phone automatically and begins to play. Phone call comes in and the music pauses, rings through the speakers and I can speak normally as the little mic was installed with the deck near the rear view mirror.

Now that the watch is in play, only one of the icons shows and it doesn't connect, at least not enough hto do anything. When I look under the BT settings on the phone it says both are connected. But I have to tap disconnect on the watch, usually a few times, to try and get a full connection to the deck. Once it does, 3 icons and music plays.

Check the individual settings on each device. In your BT settings, you should be able to tap the gear icon to the right of the name of each BT device you've got remembered. There will be options depending on what the device is capable of. This may or may not help this situation. You may also want to "forget" the car and try re-adding it.

Second, "You Make the Call" - When a call comes in, and I don't get a lot but still, I answer the call and it seems that there is no one there. What has been happening is that the audio would be connected to the watch and I'd have to manually go and change the listening preference to "phone". PITA! I believe I may have figured this one out through permissions (I've only tested it twice) but I throw it out because someone may understand the fix much better and tell me if I"m creating a problem else where. I went to the Android Wear app in settings on the phone, then permissions, and turned off permission to "phone." Also in the BT settings, the little gear icon next to Zenwatch 3, in there I unchecked the option for sharing phone.

This is where I'd definitely check those BT settings I mentioned above. Specifically, after tapping the gear icon, devices that are capable of routing audio will have options like "Phone audio", "Media audio", etc. I would make sure that at least phone audio is not checked on the watch. Maybe even media audio, since you're streaming the music to your car and not the watch.

Lastly, "The Fat Lady Sings" - a couple little things, not really issues but tenacity being what it is and all. I'm not really "into" fitness but when something is there available to use, I may want to use it. The watch came with Zen Fit and I turned on Google Fit so they are connected. Is there a way to "teach" the app what is walking and what is not? Like when I woke up this morning, it said I'd walked 80 steps. Now I haven't confirmed this, but I'm pretty sure I don't walk in my sleep and it said I slept for the same hours I really did. Or are this devices not specifically made for fitness tracking, not very accurate?

In my experience with health apps on the phone and/or watch, they're more of a guide. As you could imagine, it's hard to differentiate different types of movement. If you wore the watch while sleeping, which I'm guessing you did because it tracked your sleep, chances are that you tossed and turned or rolled over and that was enough movement that the watch assumed you were doing more than you were.

Where I like Google Fit as opposed to what S Health used to do when I used Samsung devices is that it goes by time of activity rather than actual steps. Now, some activities may not be as "healthy" as others or as much movement overall, but time of moving, to me, is a better measure since the step counters (even on a fitbit or other "dedicated" health device) are an estimate and prone to being a bit off.

I'm not into fitness either, but I do have a goal for amount of activity set in Google Fit and I do feel good when it tells me that I've met my goal, even if it's not very much. I work in IT, so unless there are major problems with the network, I don't do a lot of walking around. I make excuses to get out of my office and make a lap around the building from time to time.

BT? Wifi? Neither? - Do I have to manually click on the wifi settings in the watch to connect? I noticed while looking for something as I was writing this post, that the BT was not connected and WOULD NOT connect. So I'm wondering if that's because of a wifi connection? In the Zen Manager app and the Android Wear app, they both say connected even when the BT doesn't appear to be

It's been a while since I played with this, but when wifi first became a real option for staying connected to the phone, I did test it out. If I remember right, you do have to manually click the wifi settings to connect to a network for the first time. The watch will get info (passwords/etc) from your phone to connect to a specific network.

Once that's done though, I do believe all you have to do is get the watch out of BT range of the phone or otherwise disconnect BT between the two and the watch should jump over to wifi.

Again, it's been quite a while since I played with this, but we have an open network here at work and I connected my watch to it and then left my phone in my office and went for a walk to the other side of our very large complex. I was able to text my wife by voice with the watch while my phone was definitely out of BT range. Worked pretty well.

I've also left my watch powered on and at home, where it knew the wifi info and taken my phone with me around town. I've come back to find the watch telling me that wifi has been turned off to conserve power.

Wifi takes more battery power to use, so the watch will always default to being connected to the phone by BT when they're in range of each other. I'm not sure if you were in wifi range all day and actively using the watch while your phone wasn't handy, if it would turn wifi off to conserve power, or assume you're using it so it should keep it connected.

BT on the watch is another animal altogether. You won't find your phone in there. That's for pairing other BT devices directly to the watch. Headphones are the best example of this. If you have BT headphones and something like Google Play Music that will allow you to load songs onto your watch, you could pair the headphones to the watch and stream music to them from the watch without your phone. It's slightly odd that the watch will show up in the phone's BT settings, but the phone doesn't show up in the watch's, but that's how that works.

So, long story short on this topic, the watch is going to do what it can to stay connected to the phone while still doing what it can to save battery. For the most part, this all happens on its own.

Now, I've just added my work wifi back to my watch (it's been reset many times since I first tested the connection) and go for a walk to test it out a bit again...

 

[Jonny Kansas]

There may be a post like this one in another thread somewhere, because I'm pretty sure I shared my findings on this last time I tested it, but here's my experience just now using wifi on the watch.

I left my phone in my office and went for a stroll. Initially, I did pull up my settings and tap on wifi, so I did manually connect to it. However, we don't provide wifi back in the breakroom area (we're a nursing home, so this wifi network is for residents and their guests, not the staff). I wanted to get a pop from the machine, so I went back there.

Once I was out of range of the nearest wifi access point, the watch showed the disconnected symbol.

When I went back into range of wifi, I resisted the urge to open the settings again. It took it a little while (less than a minute, but longer than as soon as I was in range) to realize there was wifi available and connect, but it did end up connecting on its own.

Wifi is set to "Automatic" on my watch when I first open those settings, so if yours is set the same, it should eventually connect to wifi when out of BT range of the phone.

I'm guessing that it's setup to not poll to frequently for a connection in order to conserve battery life, which would explain why mine took a little while to reconnect after I was well within range.

Hope that helps answer that question a little better.

 

[Jim 777]

Thanks for those! Let's see there was a couple things you mentioned....

Permissions: after reading your details, it seemed not so confusing. The device with permission settings, is to determine what OTHER device can or can not access on that device...? So i do like being able to control my music via the watch so access to audio should be "allow" on the phone. I don't want to answer/talk on a call via the watch, so access to phone should be DENY on watch, and so forth?
I think I'll have to scroll through both devices, write down what's what, and make sure I haven't goobered it all up with trying different things.

Health apps: Yeah, should remember "guideline" and yes, monitor sleeping. Have apnea and major mental stress now so I'm curious.

Wi-fi: No automatic settings that I've found but that would make sense to be an option. I'm not around Wifi all day so only my wifi at home is the one I've put in the passphrase for, but "it looks like" I have to go in to settings > wifi > networks and then I see mine pop up, then connect. Now, I'm not concerned about battery (I turned off the ambient option and about doubled my life) but just created confusion since the BT symbol on the phone wouldn't show connected, but the apps did and I could change faces on the phone, changing on the watch.

I'm hoping that AW 2.0 is right around the corner.

Might be more, but I got to get to work. Wanted to do IT but didn't work out with schooling and paying bills at the same time. Sometimes I think I a level of tenacity that a job like that would kill my and/or and relationship I'd be in.

 

[Jonny Kansas]

I don't know that Media AUDIO needs to be on for the watch in your phone's BT settings for you to be able to control the music. I believe that just means that it will try to play the sound on the watch.

My LG Watch Urbane doesn't have those audio options in my phone's BT settings, but based on what you were saying was happening, that's what the issue sounds like to me.

Also, on my phone, my BT does say "disconnected" as well, even though the watch is connected. I'm thinking it has something to do with the AW app being what really connects the two, even though they use BT to communicate. These aren't really your standard BT connections.

As for wifi, mine says Automatic when I first tap on wifi, but then it connects to the network and the network name is shown, followed by Add network, but if I scroll down, it then says Wi-Fi Automatic next to the wifi symbol with an A in it. When I tapped on that just now, it asked me if I wanted to turn wifi off. I went back and forth turning it off and on again before it would change back to Automatic. It would just either say On or Off where it have previously said Automatic.

Still not sure how I got it back to automatic...Haha!

I also did find options under Advanced for how long it should stay connected before going into Power Save mode, which I either didn't know was there or had forgotten.

 

[Jim 777]

I paid more attention to what it says here and there and it shares more of what you explain than i thought. Once clicked on wifi, it does say automatic. Also as you just said, the AW does say connected and will push some things over. But the BT icon on the phone not showing connnected it turns out.... well.... wasn't connected because (wait for it)..... the phone BT wasn't on. I don't remember even considering turning it off.

BAck to wifi, I was at work and I had yet to connect to the wifi there (had not entered the passphrase) but when I just went in to see available networks, it went right in to the wifi. I'm thinking it's getting the saved credentials from the phone. That;s kind of cool.

 

[Jonny Kansas]

Yup. It totally takes the credentials from the phone.

Sent from my Pixel XL

 

[Jim 777]

Update:
Thought I had it, received two calls yesterday and picked up the phone and connection was there. Then on the third, was going through the watch again. Weird. Found another permission and flipped it so we'll see.

In my crawling around in the settings, I think I remember seeing something about after a certain amount of time of no activity, then the watch does something (like eco mode or something). I must have changed something because this morning after waking, I pushed a change to the watch and it didn't go. BT wasn't connected and it wouldn't connect as usual. Went in to settings on watch > BT > Devices and it asked if I wanted to turn on BT.

Am I remembering that right? Is there something that is set to turn it off after no activity?

 

[Jonny Kansas]

Depending on the Android version, it'll go into Doze mode to conserve power, but it should remain connected.

However, you don't want to use the BT menu on the watch. Toggle BT off & back on on the phone & it'll usually reconnect.

Sometimes it's as simple as opening the AW app on your phone.

Did you give AW permission to stay connected on the phone when it asked?

Sent from my Pixel XL

 

[Jim 777]

Depending on the Android version, it'll go into Doze mode to conserve power, but it should remain connected.

However, you don't want to use the BT menu on the watch. Toggle BT off & back on on the phone & it'll usually reconnect.

Sometimes it's as simple as opening the AW app on your phone.

Did you give AW permission to stay connected on the phone when it asked?

Sent from my Pixel XL

The watch in doze mode? I'm guessing I flipped some setting trying to get what I want, but not sure which. And, it did it while I was sleeping.

No, you're right, I don't want to have to navigate the watch menu. Usually I would just go in to the quick settings of the phone swiping down the notification bar and choose the watch in BT and it would connect, if needed to at all. This morning however, when I clicked the watch, it didn't even act like it was trying to connect, just a subtle screen change while my finger was touching it. I tried it three times (yes, because I am partially insane). Then noticed the Asus ZenWatch Manager app said "Disconnected" at the bottom of screen (that's rare) and AW wouldn't push changes. Only then did I go in and discover it had turned off.

As for the permissions, I'm guessing that since it works everywhere when connected, I'm not denying anything. Well, somewhere I need to deny it trying to send a phone call to the watch ;-)

 

[Jonny Kansas]

You can't change Doze settings, so it's unlikely that that is the cause.

I'm not familiar with the ZenWatch manager app. Is it required? Out just offers extra functionality? Can you connect to the watch through that app alone, or do you have to have AW installed on the phone too?

I'm just wondering if maybe the 2 apps are conflicting somehow...

Sent from my Pixel XL

 

[Jonny Kansas]

You'd think they'd take that into account, but you'd think a lot of things...

Sent from my Pixel XL

 

[Jonny Kansas]

I think your trouble is contagious.

The wife and I took the dog and baby for a walk yesterday. I turned my watch on and strapped it to my wrist before we left. Didn't get 2 blocks from our house and I looked down to see that my watch had turned itself off. No big deal. I figure the baby somehow accidentally did it when I was holding him before we got him loaded in the stroller.

Turned the watch back on (love having the side button and not having to put it on the charger to turn it on like the OG G Watch). I noticed it was having an issue connecting, but figured it was just taking its time.

Looked down a bit later and it's off again. Turned it back on, toggled BT on my phone, checked the AW app, toggled airplane mode on the watch, restarted the watch.

Still wouldn't connect and turned itself off again.

Finally, I restarted my phone (it had been acting weird over the weekend anyway and was probably overdue for a restart). In the process, I toggled airplane mode on the watch again. After the phone rebooted, I turned BT back on and it suddenly connected.

I noticed on Saturday that the phone wasn't asking for my fingerprint or PIN when I was not connected to any trusted device and was well out of my trusted location at my home. Fingerprint wasn't even an option in my lock screen settings. Very weird, but that seems to have been fixed with the reboot as well. Not altogether happy that my security went away like that though and should've restarted it sooner, but I was in the middle of a brake job from hell when I noticed it and then spent most of Sunday relaxing until our walk and didn't leave the house.

 

[legalkill]

So for "The Threesome", the bottom button is by default set to activate eco mode. Which is airplane mode. This will kill the bt to the watch and the phone will pickup the car automatically for phone audio. My music connection always connects to the car with the watch active. You press a button on the watch again and you turn off airplane mode to connect the watch back for regular use (less phone calls). Usually takes 20 seconds or so for my Honda to connect automatically when the car was already on and the watch fully connect to the watch. Is instantaneous if you airplane mode the watch before the car radio turns on.

"You make the call", if you answer on the watch, and watch is connected as phone audio it will try to launch the call on the phone which takes a second. If you answer on the phone the phone owns the call, no connection to the watch. You can always toggle bluetooth in the call options on the phone, too (which is not instantaneous). I am not sure if I tried to answer a call when the phone is connected to the car by using the watch. I assume that it would defer to the car.

"The fat Lady Sings" my Gen 1 Moto 360 would register driving as alot of walking. Probably cause I drive a stick and the constant wrist movement or the vibration of the road through the wheel. The zenwatch 3 seems alot more sensitive than the Moto 360 or the Fitbit Blaze for example. I get more steps than usual and it shows more steps than my wife's Blaze if we had a similar day on the weekend. This is probably just the sensitivity of the watch itself coupled with the sensitivity of step tracking on watches in general. I like to think I walked my 5000 steps but i who knows.

I have never really thought the wifi setting all that great. Even on the moto 360, i walk around the office and by the time the watch knows it was not on bt, i was back before wifi had a chance to kick in. Also because I have unlimited data, i never really had wifi on on my phone so. The transition from BT to wifi to BT again is not all that smooth.