LG Urbane talk

[mountainbikermark]

Just experimented more with Wifi at work. I'm quite impressed. We've got a VERY large building. 81 resident rooms, spread out in an almost figure-8 layout on one level.

@PereDroid might be interested in my findings, as he was asking about the functionality in another thread.

First of all, I set the watch up to make sure it'd connect to wifi at work. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it actually successfully connected to my public network, which usually won't let you do anything without acknowledging our terms on the splash page. I saw no splash page on the watch or the phone, but the watch said it was connected, so I decided to make my rounds around the building to check on all of my thin clients and gather serial numbers for all of our Xerox machines, because they HAVE to have that when we call and we didn't have a comprehensive list.

I get a ways down the hall and chat with the Ward Clerk for a bit and Find my phone notifies me of the disconnect. So far so good. As we're talking, I glance down because it had vibrated again and see that the disconnect icon isn't showing anymore. I walk the rest of the way down the 120ft hallway and go into the report room to check the fax machine. While there, I drew an emoji and sent it to my fiance. At this point, if you picture a square, you get the idea of the section of building I'm in. I'm straight down one side of that square from my office, most definitely not on bluetooth anymore.

Then, I make my way CLEAR across the whole building to the farthest nurse station from my office. On the way, I send a voice text, "Testing on wifi 925" is how it comes out. (making note of the time to check the timestamp upon my return to my office.) Didn't even make it 1/4 of the way back to my office and she texted me back "huh?", so I fired off another voice text explaining.

There was a bit of a hiccup moving between APs on the open mesh network. I was notified a few more times that my watch had disconnected. Still, it connected again quick enough. I got a like through tapatalk on a post while I was way far away as well.

It did take some time to reconnect via bluetooth once I returned to my office, which I get because I know that the phone waits so much longer each time to retry the connection to the watch when it drops. I setup smart lock last night, so I had to enter my PIN a few times. Obviously, I was checking it all out. In the AW app, it said my watch was connected, but in the smart lock settings, it said it wasn't connected, which makes total sense because it hadn't switched back to bluetooth.

All in all, I can see how the functionality would be handy, especially in my case if I leave my phone in my office or elsewhere in the building. At least I'd still have some access. Kinda makes me wish more apps had info viewed right on the watch vs having to open on the phone.



You can't force the watch to connect and stay connected to wifi. When you first launch into the menu to select a network, it will connect, but it always defaults to a BT connection when it's available and turns wifi completely off. There's also a setting to set "Power Save" for wifi. That can be anywhere from 15-120 minutes. 120 is the default if my memory is right. I don't think I changed it and that's what it's set on. Will be harder to test battery life using wifi for an extended period of time, but I'll work something out. Either I'll hide my phone in my car some time or sit outside and play on my tablet the way I usually do my phone and leave my phone far enough in the house that I can't get a BT connection.


That's part of what sold me on it, aside from the look of the device. I could've done without the wifi, though it should prove useful in certain situations, but I liked the idea of better access to apps and contacts and the ability to draw an emoji. Could never get it to create one with voice and think it'll be easier to quick reply with a face by doodling on the watch than talking to my wrist in certain public situations.
Android Wear version: 1.1.1.1864693
Google Play Services: 7.3.34
Android OS: 5.1.1

I didn't check it on first boot. It got an update after initial setup.

What I meant was Wi-Fi radio being on vs not on, not necessarily connected. On my phone the Wi-Fi radio goes to sleep after so many minutes and polls every so often g to see if I'm back on Wi-Fi. If I'm understanding correctly your watch does basically the same, thus saving a ton of battery? I wonder if, like our phones similarly do, you leave Bluetooth connection and your watch Wi-Fi is asleep does the Wi-Fi override the sleep policy and become active and if so does it poll a certain amount of time and go back to sleep if it doesn't find a connection? Does it save previously connected addresses?
I guess you could turn Bluetooth off on your phone to fake an out of range scenario?
I'm sure I'll have more questions at some point do thanks for your patience.

Support Our Troops !!!
<><
Beast Mode 4

 

[Jonny Kansas]

As far as I'm understanding, the wifi radio on the watch doesn't even kick on until it realizes it's been disconnected from bluetooth, so it's completely off, hence the slight delay when it switches over. I'm guessing that "Power Save" feature maybe does what you're talking about on the watch's end. As for wifi on the phone, I always set mine to keep wifi on during sleep. I don't want it using bits and pieces of data in the background just because I haven't picked it up lately. I would think it'll try to poll periodically until it connects or until it reaches that power save threshold, then I imagine it won't do so after so long and/or will shut the radio off. My other personal question is what happens if you're connected to wifi for that amount of time. Will it go into power save mode and drop wifi if you're still actively connected? I'll try more soon.

As for turning BT off on the phone to simulate a disconnect, I just did so and had the slight lag between when BT dropped and wifi kicked on on the watch, but was then able to clear 5 notifications from the watch. When I turned my phone's screen on, they were gone.

I would imagine the disconnect doesn't do much, if anything on the phone's end with the cloud sync/watch wifi issue. As long as the phone has a data connection, wifi or LTE, and the watch has wifi, it'll work.

So, on your phone, you can turn the wifi radio on, but not be connected. The only way this will happen on the watch is if you're out of BT range (or have BT off).

The watch gets the network info from your phone. In some of the videos I watched before deciding to order it, they had to pull out their phone to enter the passphrase to connect to a secured connection. Idk if that was only because they'd never connected their phones to those networks though, because I connected my watch to my secured network at home, which I use my phone on when I'm home, and it didn't ask me for a passphrase. This is why I went ahead and "connected" to the public network here at work while I was still connect to my phone via BT. Not sure if that helped or not, but I figured it was a safe bet. My phone was NOT connected to the network, but I do have it saved just in case I need to download or upload something for work and don't want to burn my data. Looking at saved networks on the watch, I see my future mother-in-law's network, which I haven't connected to with the watch, but have with the phone previously, as well as one from a local restaurant with the same situation, so I'd imagine you can connect to any that you've already connect to on the phone. Will have to play with whether you have to be actively connected to the phone to do so, but I would kinda think not, since it's an automatic switch. We'll be at her place on Sunday for Mother's day, so I'll play with that then if I remember.

When you attempt to add a network via the watch, it prompts you to click to open on the phone to do so, so no adding on the watch on the fly.

 

[Jonny Kansas]

Not horrible for the first full day with it. I just turned tilt to wake off. Thinking I may turn tilt features of as well, but figure I did give that some more time.

Sent from my Note 4

 

[mountainbikermark]

Not horrible for the first full day with it. I just turned tilt to wake off. Thinking I may turn tilt features of as well, but figure I did give that some more time.

Sent from my Note 4

After you're done with the newness it looks like it'll be a 2 day capable easily watch. I was lucky to get a day on mine when new

Support Our Troops !!!
<><
Beast Mode 4

 

[Jonny Kansas]

Agreed. Should be comparable to the g watch. Screen on all day, but I'm sure tilt to wake did some extra battery burning. I was at my desk most of the day, moving my arms all over.

Sent from my Note 4

 

[mountainbikermark]

Oh another question.
Does it have a built in music player and/gallery? If so how easy/hard is it to transfer stuff to it?

Support Our Troops !!!
<><
Beast Mode 4

 

[Jonny Kansas]

No speaker. Google Music did ask me if I want to load downloaded music to it, but I haven't tried it yet. I did so with the G watch, but never actually paired my headphones with it and/or gave it a try.

 

[Jonny Kansas]

Learned a new trick. I was reading a review on the Urbane & found out that you can enter/exit theater mode by giving the button 2 quick taps. So much better than waking the screen, swiping the shade down, swiping over, tapping theater mode.

Sent from my Note 4

 

[PereDroid]

Now you're just showing off.

 

[Jonny Kansas]

Oh yeah, Trusted Devices only works when connected via bluetooth, not wifi. Makes sense, since the option is under bluetooth devices, but good to know if you leave your phone somewhere on accident and are still connected via wifi with the watch that nobody can just pick it up and go through it.

 

[Jonny Kansas]

Took the watch off the charger around 7:15 this morning. 68 percent battery left just now. Not bad at all now that I'm back to a more "usual" usage pattern.

Sent from my Nexus 7

 

[Sajo]

Took the watch off the charger around 7:15 this morning. 68 percent battery left just now. Not bad at all now that I'm back to a more "usual" usage pattern.

Sent from my Nexus 7

Not too shabby. I'm still a big fan of "as long as I can get through a normal day...wake up to bed time...I am happy". Sounds like this watch can easily do that.

 

[Jonny Kansas]

I agree. It got great reviews for battery life. Today was a light usage day, especially compared to the days right after I got it, but even on my heaviest use days, I still had around 20% at bed time.

Sent from my Nexus 7