Thursday, August 25, 2016

What a painful setup process

So I ended up buying a LG Urbane 1st gen from Amazon. I got the International version, with clearly disclosed it does not come with a warranty. It was in the $150-$160 range so why not. My primary reason? Looks like an actual watch. I own the Galaxy Gear 2 since its first release. Used Tizen then lurked around XDA and flashed it to Android Wear. I have had a Galaxy Note 1st gen since its release. Flash the heck out of it with the help of the XDA community, going from ice cream sandwich to jelly bean, etc. Then bought a S4. Avoiding to mess around with XDA but ended up here again. Good stuff. Then moved onto a Note 3 (AT&T) on super locked down. Own a Nexus 6P since last November 2015. Running official Nougat since 08/22. So I learned a thing or two around here. 2 days ago I bought this LG Urbane. Oh my god, what a painful experience. I have to throw myself in the mix though, as I learn from making mistakes. So I am definitely a wildcard while troubleshooting.... LOL

I am not a complete newbie with flashing. But here is what baffled me the most with that Urbane watch: I ran into the "Bluetooth Share stopped" error message in a loop. I realized the watch came with an old version of Wear and the OTA didn't work. So I started to read around here and managed to learn quickly to boot in recovery, install the ADB console in Windows, the Google USB drivers, and find the sideload zip files to get me to a certain level/version. It wasn't super easy but I figured it out. After that, I kept getting that error message about Bluetooth Share crashing over and over. I cleared caches, rebooted, factory reset SOOOOOO many times. Even ended using my old Note 3 to isolate the process and trying to figure out if my Nexus 6P was at fault somehow. The craziest thing? When you do the same thing over and over, and over, yet the steps do not happen in the same order or not at all. I kid you not. Sometimes the watch would do its initial sync. Sometimes it wouldn't. Sometimes it would ask me to allow notifications, sometimes not. Sometimes it showed that it is connected. Sometimes not. Yet the Android Wear said it was. And the watch too under the About section. All those steps that I was familiar with with a specific order were not consistent. Interestingly enough my good old Gear 2 would always do the exact same thing over and over if I ever reset it or flashed it. And no, I'm not talking about Samsung versus LG here. Just saying it was a nightmare for troubleshooting purposes. I have been in IT since late 90s. Mostly hardware. I am told I am very meticulous. So this was something else. I read another thread when someone was SO annoyed about the whole first impression thing. Yep, Android just sucks a$$ when it comes to that. Do not get me wrong, I am a VERY happy Nexus 6P owner. But man, since the Galaxy Note 1st gen, I have been stuck saying to family and friends "I'm sure next phone or android version will be better". I owned an iPhone 3GS before the Note. And I am not planning on going back to Apple soon. But android just sucks with first impression, period. I sometimes spent thousands of dollar on enterprise grade hardware for my network. Mostly HP. And we ran into some issue. HP ended up saying "Yeah, we pulled the plug". I know what it's like to run into badly designed hardware and software. But it's amazing to me that in late 2016, the whole android experience is just that: a freaking circus. And I have been hoping for years now that it will get mature enough. Look at Windows: as much as I like to use Windows as my go to Pinata, I have to admit the Windows 10 experience has been a huge improvement over the last 20 years. That's my experience is based on Windows 3.11, 95, 98, 2000, XP, 7, 8, 8.1 and now 10. Over 1,000 computers migrated/upgraded in the last 10 years. Android needs to grow up. Or I need to shut up. I don't know. </rant>

So now, that error bluetooth share message: I almost gave up. I have used the "Everyday Watch Face" (Marcel Dopita) on my Gear 2 for a long time. Good on battery and very practical. I didn't mess with any watch face with my Urbane as I thought I needed to just focus on that error message first. I finally installed the "Everyday Watch Face" and the error message stopped. By the time it stopped, I gave up for hours with troubleshooting so I didn't make any modifications. If any of you has an explanation including teaching me what the hell happened, please do so. LOL

I love the watch now, it's about time. I'm scared to change the watch face but would that make any sense at all???

I'm at build number M1D63G.

Steps taken:

Tried to configure watch under Wear 1.1.x or something old out of the box.
ADB sideload 1.5.x (around 277MB in size I believe). This fixed OTA. I ended up applying 3 more versions after to get me to M1D63G.
Nexus 6P was OTAed since November. Used the beta of Nougat a month ago. OTAed the official Nougat 3 days ago. Ended up wiping it clean from scratch to eliminate my Nexus as a problem.
Also set watch on my old Note 3 and reproduce same bluetooth share error message there too.
Paired, unpaired watch more than 10 times.
Accessed the recovery mode on watch to clear cache, etc more than 10 times.


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