just received WearOS 4 on my Pixel Watch :tada:
# compose-wearb
bod
10/27/2023, 8:29 AMjust received WearOS 4 on my Pixel Watch 🎉
🎉 5
y
yschimke
10/27/2023, 8:57 AMCurious what your take is. Anything obvious?
b
bod
10/27/2023, 9:01 AMactually at the moment, the thing I notice the most is ... I don't see any difference 😅
y
yschimke
10/27/2023, 9:02 AMOoofff...
b
bod
10/27/2023, 9:03 AMit's probably a good thing - I still remember going from Android Wear 1 to 2 back in the day, which rendered my watch unusably slow 🙈
y
yschimke
10/27/2023, 9:09 AMFor any developers, I'd still recommend the PW 2 for USB.
➕ 1
b
bod
10/27/2023, 9:10 AMoh there's a difference with the first PW related to USB?
t
Tolriq
10/27/2023, 9:14 AMGot my PW2 it's a nice watch 🙂 Unrelated @yschimke but is there a plan for something in Horologist to easily detect when phone and watch are connected to same wifi network? Seems like the missing point to be able to download transcoded media from the phone to the watch in a more performant way than via BT.
l
louiscad
10/27/2023, 10:02 AMlouiscad
10/27/2023, 10:02 AMRestarting it like it's running Windows I guess…
louiscad
10/27/2023, 10:05 AMAlso the boot animation (when it goes from monochrome to colorful with dots animating) lagged severely, not sure why.
louiscad
10/27/2023, 10:07 AMReboot was very long, and it's quite laggy and slow in the several minutes after reboot, like it's trying to launch too many apps in the background at the same time, instead of focusing of the Watch Face and notifications to start up, and let other stuff get some run time a bit after.
louiscad
10/27/2023, 10:08 AMNot sure if tiles have an impact
louiscad
10/27/2023, 10:09 AMStill laggy, 5 minutes in
b
bod
10/27/2023, 10:09 AMmaybe it's "optimizing apps" in the background
l
louiscad
10/27/2023, 10:10 AMMy code based watch face was buttery smooth before the update. Now, it can't animate the seconds clock hand in time (set to twice per second, with adaptive frame rate as I update the value to not redraw the same thing where there's no change).
b
bod
10/27/2023, 10:11 AMI bet it's gonna settle after a while (I'm an optimist 😄)
l
louiscad
10/27/2023, 10:12 AMI just put it back on the charger, quite annoyed by that UX honestly 😣
louiscad
10/27/2023, 10:14 AMOptimizing apps in the background is bad. My Pixel 7 Pro was also super laggy just after Android 14 update. It makes you believe it's done on purpose. Android is 15 years old, why no attention is paid to those details!? After an update , I want my device to feel as good if not better than before. It's not like I'm using a 100£$€ device, I bought the very best Google had to offer from last year.
louiscad
10/27/2023, 10:16 AMI'd prefer my device to tell me "it's going to take about 1h to update, keep it on the charger, we can do overnight and reboot as nothing happened tonight if you wish BTW" rather than telling me "hey, I'll update real quick", then I get a horrible UX because it's sneakily doing God knows what in the background without letting me know it's happening and that it's why it's barely usable or not comfortable at the time.
b
bod
10/27/2023, 10:18 AMI agree
l
louiscad
10/27/2023, 10:18 AMBTW, I think it'd be best for the update to be advertised on the phone via a notification and a nice presentation about what's new rather than telling nothing but "update" on the tiny screen. I want to know what news things are coming on my watch as a user, I can't guess it!
b
bod
10/27/2023, 10:19 AMalso true 💯 . I don't know what this update brought.
l
louiscad
10/27/2023, 10:19 AMAlso, not just a push notification, I want the "What's new" to stick around in the Pixel Watch app until I read it.
b
bod
10/27/2023, 10:20 AMto be fair, maybe despite the major number change, this is actually a small update feature-wise. Maybe there's nothing to tell the user
l
louiscad
10/27/2023, 10:21 AMSame could be said about Android updates, though it's a bit better than the Wear OS situation, the "What's new" is not advertised in a very user friendly way, and it's very easy to miss. Apple is not the best at that game, but they're definitely better, and that makes users excited about updates.
👍 1
louiscad
10/27/2023, 10:21 AMOne good thing I noticed:
louiscad
10/27/2023, 10:22 AMTapping the watch face in ambient mode goes straight to the watch face code instead of just exiting ambient mode. It's a cool thing (and some users might want a toggle to disable it also, though I'm not sure for myself yet)
y
yschimke
10/27/2023, 10:23 AM@Tolriq "but is there a plan for something in Horologist to easily detect when phone and watch are connected to same wifi network" interesting idea. So basically, when on Wifi, likely same network, direct socket connections between them?
l
louiscad
10/27/2023, 10:23 AMThis is something that can be told to the user. It should make day-to-day use better, I'm excited about that simple thing :)
➕ 1
y
yschimke
10/27/2023, 10:25 AM👍 1
b
bod
10/27/2023, 10:26 AMahhh very cool indeed!
t
Tolriq
10/27/2023, 10:26 AM@yschimke yes exactly, my music player app can connect to many different media providers (self hosted) and many do not support transcoding, downloading flac to the watch is not nice, and the phone app support transcoding via ffmpeg, and everything is already working on phone app. Just need an easy way to detect when I can use the app webserver to serve the transcoded media to avoid slow BT. (Edit: But a complete native API to do that would be nice for a few other use cases I suppose to avoid having a webserver)
y
yschimke
10/27/2023, 10:30 AM@Tolriq feel free to file a request on Horologist, it feels doable, but niche. But might help with other situations such as connecting to devices on the Wifi network, then releasing the Wifi request.
t
Tolriq
10/27/2023, 10:32 AMA request for expansion of the connectivity rule or a request for the global socket connection stuff?
y
yschimke
10/27/2023, 10:39 AMStart by describing what you'd like and the API. It might just be something we work on with you. There is already code in Horologist for managing cell and wifi networks.
👍 1
a
andrew
10/27/2023, 4:46 PMOut of curiosity, do the pins on the original Pixel Watch (behind the watch band) work when the watch is fully booted, or is that recovery only? I can’t remember…
andrew
10/27/2023, 4:46 PMScreenshot 2023-10-27 at 12.46.36.png
y
yschimke
10/27/2023, 4:59 PMBoth, but you'd need the debug adapter mentioned here https://developers.google.com/android/images-watch
a
andrew
10/27/2023, 5:06 PMMmmmmmm, or a sacrificial usb cable 🤪
andrew
10/27/2023, 5:06 PMDidn’t know google distributed shims for USB like that though, that’s cool
andrew
10/27/2023, 5:06 PMShame it’s invite only though
a
amoledwatchfaces
10/27/2023, 5:11 PMPixel Watch 2 is perfect for testing. With Galaxy Watch 4/6 it was so frustrating. Wireless debugging was turned off repeatedly after some time of inactivity.
☝🏻 1
☝️ 2
amoledwatchfaces
10/28/2023, 4:44 AMOnly thing I miss is the bigger screen. Hopefully Pixel Watch 3 will come with two versions, one with at least 1.4"
2 Views