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Hi, proud owner of the gear for like 2 days, finding my uses a bit limited so far, so I thought i would list mine, if you list yours! Maybe we can get ideas from each other of how to best use this awesome piece of tech:
1. Notifications (the only one that isn't great is Touchdown for exchange, does normal Samsung exchange email work better - ie show a preview of the email?
2. The time: yup, it is a watch, after all
3. Calendar: : Keeping tabs on what my next meeting is
4. Camera:; For quick snaps to remind me of things, it's ideal
5. Phone:: For seeing who's calling, and rejecting their call usually
Feel like I should start using the pedometer, but i go to the gym every day, and don't walk alot. And definitely feel like there are other uses for this that haven't been thought of/ apps haven't come out yet. I haven't gone the custom ROM route, but I have updated to MK7.
A
1. To look like a geek
2. Notifications
3. Watch
4 Making short calls to find other peoples phones.
5. Checking current weather conditions
1 - time
2 - meeting events
3 - pedometer (hooked into s health)
4 - camera
5 - notificaations
6 - gaming! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAQ3xQnaW18&feature=c4-overview&list=UUZAweAIkRllQ7PjR9SfnNyg
7 - news (using zite)
8 - quick photo notes to Evernote
1. geek
2. girl magnet
3. phone/text
4. watch
5. wrist top flashlight like on the old centurions cartoon.
1. Time
2. Hacking
Not sure if the order is right
1: Notifications. Knowing who emailed me or texted me without picking up my phone is huge.
2: Music control. It works great with the stock music app, and even shows album art on the watch. I can be on the treadmill with my BT headphones and the phone completely hidden away and change songs and volume.
3: Quick pictures.
4: Weather updates.
5: Pedometer.
so what kind of things can you do with real apps, after installing the null rom? i'm really tempted to pick one up if there are any black friday deals
I really wish the #1 feature of the Gear was to tell time. But I find it so frustrating when glancing at my wrist to check the time all I see is a blank screen! C'mon! The wrist flick thing works ok if your hands are free. But at work my hands are always working/holding on something, and flicking of the wrist is not an option. Very hard to consider the Gear a true watch if I can never get it to tell me the time.
1. Notifications
2. Kill/waste time loading ROMs and customizing watch faces
3. Camera
4. Attract nearby geeks within a 25ft radius
5. Time
definitely this would come in handy when weightlifting in the gym
imdbui said:
I really wish the #1 feature of the Gear was to tell time. But I find it so frustrating when glancing at my wrist to check the time all I see is a blank screen! C'mon! The wrist flick thing works ok if your hands are free. But at work my hands are always working/holding on something, and flicking of the wrist is not an option.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agree, and even when I flick my wrist it shows up only 75% of the time... needs to be either more sensitive or always-on (it has an AMOLED screen that shouldn't burn too much battery?)
eurorauser said:
Agree, and even when I flick my wrist it shows up only 75% of the time... needs to be either more sensitive or always-on (it has an AMOLED screen that shouldn't burn too much battery?)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
YEP! I was able to run Big Digital Clock app and have it running with the display always-on, but the battery on the Gear is tiny, so it does drain it quickly. Also, there is an issue with screen burn-in with the clock always on. Overall, I still wear the Gear over my other watches for the geek factor.. pretty cool to have a tablet on ur wrist that lets u read ur notifications. I'm coming from the original Sony Smart Watch on my PPC, which was a watch #1, then notifier #2.
My List
1. New geek toy to play with
2. Reading notifications while in meetings etc.
3. Taking calls while my hands are full.
4. Snoozing my alarm in the morning so I don't need to roll over and find my phone.
5. Telling the time.
6.Taking quick snaps.
7. Controlling my music for my Bluetooth headphones.
8. Using the wine scanning app
Except for having android wear the new Samsung and LG watches don't seem to represent any major improvement over the gear. They still have a 1 day battery life and neither one has a camera. As strange as it may seem, I find the gear camera very useful.
My understanding is the LG has a 36 hour battery life with the screen on all the time. So, you can see the time constantly like a regular watch. It gets brighter if you engage the interface.
I wish the Gear did that.
I think I only get about 2 hours of screen on time for the Gear.
screen on
screen on is nice although the screen is a lower resolution. I think the lg spec page indicates battery life is 1 day, but testing will tell.
The resolution looks good enough for the screen size in this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBWNZTYPbzA
I'd take always on screen with that resolution over the screen time of the Gear with the higher resolution any day,
Actual watch is kinda ugly though
moto
yea, they're really pushing the round moto as the "beautiful" watch, but price is supposedly above $300.
I actually like the look of the gear live, the way the metal curves over the wrist look kinda cool. Plus at £169 it's not that expensive really, the only thing I want confirmation on is can we answer calls on it ? I like being able to take a call while driving or working.
Sent from my SM-T320 using Tapatalk
Actually, I like the look and interactions with the notifications on the LG better than the Gear.
Not sure if all Android Wear UIs will be the same, or some customisation will be done by each brand.
LG G Watch Unboxing and Initial Setup: http://youtu.be/TLYgU3XErGU
Sent from my SM-N900 using XDA Free mobile app
hoddy4 said:
yea, they're really pushing the round moto as the "beautiful" watch, but price is supposedly above $300.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I will gladly pay more than $300 to add the moto to my watch collection.
Sent from my SPH-L900 using XDA Premium HD app
No speakers on any of the first 3 Android Wear watches. They have mics so you can voice interact with the watch, but you wont be able to conduct a call from any of the watches.
Bladder61 said:
No speakers on any of the first 3 Android Wear watches. They have mics so you can voice interact with the watch, but you wont be able to conduct a call from any of the watches.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So can they do the following?
Make a call
Can we load music, movie, ringtones
Can we add apps like google play music
Otherwise, what can we use that 4gb internal storage for
Tia,
Ian b
richlum said:
The resolution looks good enough for the screen size in this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBWNZTYPbzA
I'd take always on screen with that resolution over the screen time of the Gear with the higher resolution any day,
Actual watch is kinda ugly though
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually, the Gear 1 is able to keep the screen on all the time (but it kills your battery sooner ofcourse)
I am on Null_23 and installed "Studio Clock" from Play Store.
This clock (it's an app, no widget or watchface) has the option to keep the screen on, which works perfectly.
1 click on the screen makes it brighter.
After a few seconds it dims the screen again.
EDIT : Ok, just tested a little more : watch will stay on untill a notification comes in. After that it will switch off.
no microphone and no camera
no microphone and no camera equals no go for these new phones relative to the gear.
hoddy4 said:
no microphone and no camera equals no go for these new phones relative to the gear.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The new Android Wear watches do have mics. Its the primary way you interact with "OK Google". The watches are always listening and from reviews respond instantly to "OK Google" even in a noisy room.
I still think the hardware on our Gear 1 is superior to the AW devices. Hopefully we may get some Devs that can figure out how to get AW on our watch.
hoddy4 said:
no microphone and no camera equals no go for these new phones relative to the gear.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think he ment speaker and not microfoon.
The new Gear watches don't have a speaker for calling.
In fact, as far as I have seen, they can't be used for calling whereas our Gear 1's are able to
thanks for the correction. the point is that the gear hardware is in some ways superior to the new ones.
You have to think of Android Wear devices as "Nexi." They are the wearables equivalent of AOSP meaning they're all functionally the same. Everything they do (so far) is tied to Google Services which is great if you're "all in" with Google as the main provider for what you do on your phone. The Tizen Gear's are a better choice if you are more dependent on some of the Samsung apps and services. Android Wear is really just Google Now on your wrist. At least as it currently stands. And once a notification is dismissed it's gone which, based on how I use my current Gear, wouldn't thrill me.
The watch starts off dark (and dims after 5 seconds; this is immutable for now). To wake up the always-on display, you can press the lock button, twist your wrist (and wait a beat or two), or tap the display. If notifications await you, they show up in card form, which you can swipe away to dismiss or swipe up to expand. Swiping to the left reveals finger-friendly icons for making the next move, like opening the notification in your phone or launching into navigation.
You can swipe down from the top to view the date and your battery life meter, or mute and unmute the phone. A long press calls up wallpaper motifs, most of which Google supplied, though a few are Samsung's own. Holding on the lock button invokes the Settings and its various options.
Still, most of what you do on the Gear Live you do with your voice: setting alarms and reminders, navigating, and composing a text message or email to contacts. Samsung, by the way, has splashed out with adding its own stopwatch interface in addition to Google's. You can ask to see your heart rate, which triggers the monitor to do its thing; you can likewise demand to see how many steps you've taken.
Notification displays come in the form of miniaturized Google Now cards and pass along information like stocks, weather, sports scores, and social interactions. You can also control a music player and field phone calls. Notifications are larger and easier to read than notifications seen on Samsung's other wearables, but this is more controlled by Google than by Samsung, whose customized contributions are heavily curtailed with Android Wear.
Google's voice-driven interface has its ups and downs: we did manage to execute several voice commands, including sending short texts and email messages. But, one drawback popped up immediately: you can't approve or abort a message if Google's voice engine misinterprets you, or if you change your mind. Grammarians also won't like the usual issues that come with voice transcription -- mainly irregular capitalization and punctuation you have to voice yourself.
Android Wear is meant to be always-on: in the default mode, the Samsung Gear Live (and LG G Watch) have displays that are bright and colorful, but power down into dimmer, black and white displays that always stay lit to some small degree. As a result, our early impression on battery life isn't good. We got less than 24 hours of use on a full charge. Making the screen go fully dark after a few seconds should help, but then you'd need to wake it up to see the time or do anything else. Battery life seems like it could be a major drawback on the first generation of Android Wear watches.http://www.cnet.com/products/samsung-gear-live/
Use Outside
BarryH_GEG said:
You have to think of Android Wear devices as "Nexi." They are the wearables equivalent of AOSP meaning they're all functionally the same. Everything they do (so far) is tied to Google Services which is great if you're "all in" with Google as the main provider for what you do on your phone. The Tizen Gear's are a better choice if you are more dependent on some of the Samsung apps and services. Android Wear is really just Google Now on your wrist. At least as it currently stands. And once a notification is dismissed it's gone which, based on how I use my current Gear, wouldn't thrill me.
The watch starts off dark (and dims after 5 seconds; this is immutable for now). To wake up the always-on display, you can press the lock button, twist your wrist (and wait a beat or two), or tap the display. If notifications await you, they show up in card form, which you can swipe away to dismiss or swipe up to expand. Swiping to the left reveals finger-friendly icons for making the next move, like opening the notification in your phone or launching into navigation.
You can swipe down from the top to view the date and your battery life meter, or mute and unmute the phone. A long press calls up wallpaper motifs, most of which Google supplied, though a few are Samsung's own. Holding on the lock button invokes the Settings and its various options.
Still, most of what you do on the Gear Live you do with your voice: setting alarms and reminders, navigating, and composing a text message or email to contacts. Samsung, by the way, has splashed out with adding its own stopwatch interface in addition to Google's. You can ask to see your heart rate, which triggers the monitor to do its thing; you can likewise demand to see how many steps you've taken.
Notification displays come in the form of miniaturized Google Now cards and pass along information like stocks, weather, sports scores, and social interactions. You can also control a music player and field phone calls. Notifications are larger and easier to read than notifications seen on Samsung's other wearables, but this is more controlled by Google than by Samsung, whose customized contributions are heavily curtailed with Android Wear.
Google's voice-driven interface has its ups and downs: we did manage to execute several voice commands, including sending short texts and email messages. But, one drawback popped up immediately: you can't approve or abort a message if Google's voice engine misinterprets you, or if you change your mind. Grammarians also won't like the usual issues that come with voice transcription -- mainly irregular capitalization and punctuation you have to voice yourself.
Android Wear is meant to be always-on: in the default mode, the Samsung Gear Live (and LG G Watch) have displays that are bright and colorful, but power down into dimmer, black and white displays that always stay lit to some small degree. As a result, our early impression on battery life isn't good. We got less than 24 hours of use on a full charge. Making the screen go fully dark after a few seconds should help, but then you'd need to wake it up to see the time or do anything else. Battery life seems like it could be a major drawback on the first generation of Android Wear watches.http://www.cnet.com/products/samsung-gear-live/
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Click to collapse
The gear is very difficult to view outside. I hope the new watches improve on outside useability. Also, I don't understand why the use of solar power is not used to increase battery life since these devices (unlike a phone) are often in sunlight. I'm not sure if the technology is not ready or the cost is still too high, although the I know that I would be willing to pay more for significantly better battery life.
hoddy4 said:
The gear is very difficult to view outside. I hope the new watches improve on outside useability. Also, I don't understand why the use of solar power is not used to increase battery life since these devices (unlike a phone) are often in sunlight. I'm not sure if the technology is not ready or the cost is still too high, although the I know that I would be willing to pay more for significantly better battery life.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Solar power seems like a cool idea but at the current technology, the rate at which it recharges the battery under regular exposure to sunlight is very very slow. It would barely make a difference. Plus not a lot of people like to be out under the direct light (cancer and crap, y'know).
Another idea would be the watch being able to recharge by shaking (like some flash lights). We move our arms a lot but I don't know how much kinetic energy is needed for it to be effective.
Gear Manager and Battery Life
I am somewhat surprised by the apparent differences in gear battery life when using different versions of the gear manager. I haven't by any means done a scientific study, but different versions seem to effect battery life more than others. Don't know why this is.
I just got this watch today and spent the day going through the options, and finding out how things worked. I have moved from the Gear Fit which I liked, due the functionality of what it did, suited me for what I needed. One of these functions was the Timer.
The Live's Timer app is very stupid in comparison. You can't specify an exact minute / second combination except by voice, and I can't figure out how to view the timer, once it's started, to view the time that's left. Once the Timer starts, it basically goes into hiding and you can't bring it up again?
Is there a good countdown timer app that anybody knows of? This is basically the only function that I need, to move from the Gear Fit full time.
I have downloaded a number of apps specified in the 150+ Apps thread, of which have made the watch so much better than the Fit, but there doesn't seem to be any Timer / Countdown in the search.
TIA
Edited original post as now getting. a collection of tasker tasks i have going on and easier to keep them in the first post but Will help below if anybody wants to copy them, also if anyone else wants to post there's that will be good.
1st) have tasker to toggle settings like wifi brightness etc when i get to work. Reverts settings back when i get home. Produces notifications on watch.
2nd) sends a message to my wife when i say launch task 1 that tells her im on my way home.
3) launches a autowear location menu on the watch. In the menu i can select wether i want high accuracy or low and wether i want location services on or off atall.
4) when i charge my phone between 2230hrs and 0625hrs the watch is switched to screen off, Bluetooth off and phone set to vibrate. When its unplugged or after 0625 the watch is switched to always on and phone is muted.
5) mobile data on and off options via autowear.
6) detects when i have lost connection to the watch and immediately turns on GPS to record the location. Then notifies me on my phone with a map view. I fix generators for a living so i need to take my watch of sometimes or when i have a shower in the gym etc. If for whatever reason i forget it which is unlikely i will know where i last had it.
7) every morning when i take my phone and watch off charge it selects a different watchface every morning at random from a predefined list. (needs watchmaker to be installed)
8) using autowear so that when i start My Tracks on the watch it automatically starts my gps task for me.
9) little on screen widget that i can control my Xbox/sky/tv changing channels, volume, play and pause, go to Fifa 15, record that, turn everything off. Accomplished using autowear, autoremote, autoinput, and a redundant tablet.
I have only just began with tasker so my methods won't be the most efficient but they work. If anyone has better ways as i mainly using auto input then please get in touch.
Could you describe which apps you used to pull this off? Thank you
Yeah sure, was a app called Tasker that i used on my phone to create it all and then a tasker plugin called tasker wear i think.
I have since been tinkering with it.
The updated version now has the following options;
1) text the wife I'm on my way home.
2) turns Wi-Fi of, auto brightness on, sync off
3) opposite of 2.
4) closes and returns back to watch face.
With option 2 and 3 i get a notification of what has beebeen switched on/ off.
With option 1 it also activates option 3 ready for when i get home.
Also if i forget to do the above especially switch evereverything on it detects when I'm nearly home and does it for me.
check AutoWear tasker plugin from joao, you can do anything with it in combination with the other Autoapps.
TheKaser said:
check AutoWear tasker plugin from joao, you can do anything with it in combination with the other Autoapps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll have a look at that thanks, currently going to create a task that switches between gps and battery saving location as you can't turn location of anymore. So will have it switch to gps when needed and back to battery saving when not.
Also going to see if i can switch to cinema mode when charging and lost connection to the phone together and to revert back to previous or new watch face when undocked and regains connection to phone.
Hi Phil, would love to hear how you get on with that.
Hi rusty,
Just finished putting something together.
I have tasker detect when it's on charge and if between 2230 and 0625, and if so it switches the watch screen to off, and Bluetooth of.
using a profile manger, that detects that the watch it's no longer connected so switches notifications on the phone back on.
The opposite is when it's unplugged it switches Bluetooth back on, turns the watch screen to always on and the profile manager then detects the watch so turns the phone to mute but watch still vibrates.
I can now sleep at night with no lights keeping me awake and the only thing i have to do is plug my phone in.
Just to note it was pretty simple to set up with tasker and autoinput.
TheKaser said:
check AutoWear tasker plugin from joao, you can do anything with it in combination with the other Autoapps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi kaser, as you recommended autowear do you have any experience with it as i can't get my head round it and there isn't much on YouTube or Google to help out.
phil gpx said:
Hi kaser, as you recommended autowear do you have any experience with it as i can't get my head round it and there isn't much on YouTube or Google to help out.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi, sorry for the late reply, I was on holidays.
I do have some experience. You need to download AutoApps from Google Play and suscribe to the alpha testing. Then you can download AutoWear. For this you also need to joing the Google+ community where the developer is always nice and reactive when posting bugs, questions or guidelines. Posting at the community is the best thing you can do since AutoWear is still in Alpha and it improves every day and it is not too straight forward to understand, especially how it communicates with AutoVoice and how commands and parameters are passed to Tasker.
By the way, I have a similar profile telling my girlfriend when I get to work, when I leave work and when I have parked at home coming from work, which automatically trigger depending on my location and connection to my car's bluetooth or work's WiFi. You don't really need your watch for that
Cheers for replying.
I have already downloaded it and played around but can't get my head around the processes of the app.
I followed the guide for the voice screen but cant get new screens up or start tasks etc.
I'm usually pretty good at working things out but cant with autowear.
what is it you are trying to do? Do you have the latest version of tasker?
Yeah i have the updated tasker but just can't work out how to get from the voice screen too say a "4 menu screen" that has tasks i have set up. Not sure what i want to accomplish with tasker next but i know if i can understand autowear it would help.
Have you done anything with autowear.
I have done the above tasks in the first post with autoinput and taskerwear but that is just a series of notifications that you can select to start tasks.
my main use for autowear is to send whatsapp messages from scratch (whatsapp currently only allows to reply to messages).
To achieve this I open an AutoWear Voice Screen by shaking the watch, and say "write to XXXX and say YYYY". This triggers an AutoVoice profile configured to react to "write to (?<contact>.+) and say (?<message>.+) (using Regex)
Inside the task, I do an WhatsTasker plugin contact search of the variable %contact generated by the regex command. Once found, I text the %message to this contact using whatstasker.
The best thing to do is to read the variable descriptions in the task. For example, you create your profile of AutoVoice Recognized. Inside it, before clicking configuration, you can see all the local variables available and their description. These are usable within the task. Same thing goes for any autowear task, they are usable after calling the task.
For example, in my task, after finding the contact, I have an AutoWear confirmation screen with the picture of my contact, his name, and the message I dictated. And following that I have an if %awmessage (the output of this confirmation screen) is different to cancel, then send the message.
Hope this helps a bit!
Thanks buddy, i will try and emulate this tonight once the kids are in bed. Whatsapp was one of the things i have been thinking of doing, just wish there was a way of bringing up a previous conversation without waiting for a new message.
well maybe you can capture the messages as they come, along with the sender's name, and save them in a temp file. Then create an autowear screen that shows the content of this file when requested... but I guess it would be very difficult to make it work perfectly (especially with groups).
I have managed to create and implement a mobile data on and off switch into my interactive notification popup for system settings using tasker, taskerwear and autoinput.
I now have the ability to switch wifi, mobile data, gps on and off as well as high and low accuracy location services and change profiles from one notifaction popping up.
left watch behind
Currently trying to set up a tasker profile that when i get disconnected from my watch will activate gps, stores the location, notifies you where it is and shows you on the map.
Hopefully will never need it but you never know. I.e you leave it in the gym, at work etc
Is there already something that does something similar as struggling at the moment but will crack on if there isn't.
Any one let me know about how to get nearby cell tower ID in a single variable.
Otherwise, how to convert the context in profile as a task.
Ty
Sent from my Micromax A58 using XDA Free mobile app
I'm sorrlearning tasker but i think if you create a new profile that activates when you connect to that cell tower. Then create a task and set variable %whateveryouwantto to %CellID.
You should only have to do that profile once and the variable will be set and you can use it in your profiles and tasks.
On another note i got my lost watch profile working like a charm.
Great Job
TheKaser said:
my main use for autowear is to send whatsapp messages from scratch (whatsapp currently only allows to reply to messages).
To achieve this I open an AutoWear Voice Screen by shaking the watch, and say "write to XXXX and say YYYY". This triggers an AutoVoice profile configured to react to "write to (?<contact>.+) and say (?<message>.+) (using Regex)
Inside the task, I do an WhatsTasker plugin contact search of the variable %contact generated by the regex command. Once found, I text the %message to this contact using whatstasker.
The best thing to do is to read the variable descriptions in the task. For example, you create your profile of AutoVoice Recognized. Inside it, before clicking configuration, you can see all the local variables available and their description. These are usable within the task. Same thing goes for any autowear task, they are usable after calling the task.
For example, in my task, after finding the contact, I have an AutoWear confirmation screen with the picture of my contact, his name, and the message I dictated. And following that I have an if %awmessage (the output of this confirmation screen) is different to cancel, then send the message.
Hope this helps a bit!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It sounds great :good:
May you please share your work with screenshots or something else so I can make it work for me?
Thanks in advance and best regards
Topic says it all. Though I can locate "shuffle" in Wearable App on phone, I cannot get it to install on watch. Currently I need to manually change watch face(s). Would prefer automatic, as alluded to in web searches.
Was able to locate "shuffle" and load. Located at end of "manage watch faces".
I like Shuffle as well...
I can't find a shuffle function in the wearable app. The watchface app I use has that functionality built in, but I don't use it because the watchface I made is perfect for me...
The shuffle option is on one of the watch faces in My watchfaces section. You can starting shuffling from there. 2 options to shuffle 1 Selected/All 2 Daily/hourly/weekle
is the shuffle time broken for anyone else?
whether I set it to hourly or daily, it just shuffles randomly whenever it wants to
sesnut said:
is the shuffle time broken for anyone else?
whether I set it to hourly or daily, it just shuffles randomly whenever it wants to
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have "disabled" it. I found that it randomly used the same watch faces (four) and wouldn't adhere to the "schedule". It had a mind of its own. Also, it kept on adding "apps" to my watch. Just as easy to press and hold center of current watch face, which then takes you to all of the watches on your phone and select the one you want to use.