Wear OS Devices, Do They Work?

ScribbleJ

Just installed Graphene today and it was a bit of a slog trying to set up all my stuff from my lack-of-backups-other-than-Google's but I got through it and almost everything is peachy.

One big standout - my TicWatch C2+. I can't seem to get through the initial pairing and setup using the "Wear OS By Google" app on the Google Play Store. It's not very clear about what's gone wrong either - just drops out of the process at the first post-pairing step. "Getting your watch details..." runs on the phone for a minute then dumps me to "Couldn't Update Your Watch." The only thing you can do then is factory reset the watch and start over. No matter what I do, this is as far as I get.

I fully understand the difficulties in maintaining the level of privacy and security that Graphene aims to provide while in this scenario. Having it work at all is the primary concern for me - anything else will be secondary at best.

My questions: 1) Has anyone else had this problem - or has anyone else had success with this model or any other model of WearOS watch? 2) What steps can I take to investigate the problem further and maybe figure out a solution on my own? 3) Am I in the right place?

Hulk

Do you have Sandboxed Google Play installed and properly configured in the same user profile?
https://grapheneos.org/usage#sandboxed-google-play

ScribbleJ

Hulk I believe I do - installed from Apps and only the one profile. I've installed the WearOS app and plenty of my must-haves from the Google Play Store and they all seem fine, including, for the moment, plenty of Google-made apps such as Gmail and Drive and Sheets. (As an aside, I have to use RCS messaging for reasons and so I had to install the Google Messenger app and to do RCS it has to do something it calls "verifying your phone number" which also failed until I installed the "Google" app from Google Play; utterly mystifying).

MetropleX

Setting up Wear OS should be no different than any other Bluetooth device. It might need nearby device permissions. Can you confirm the permissions on the wear OS app?

bereft_penguin

Until fairly recently (I stopped checking at every release but sometime on or before the 2022053100 release) I was unable to complete the setup of my watch 4. It failed to copy my google account and left me needing to reset the watch evey time. However, the last time I tried the setup worked perfectly, including google pay and the assistant. The only functionality that's broken is Samsung Pay, due to safety net and Samsung not separating the watch and phone os during setup. You may need to have the google app installed on the phone to get all the features like the assistant. If the setup still doesn't work make sure you have the latest wear OS installed (might need a secondary device with full google services). Also make sure you have the latest companion apps for your wearable, and they have all the requested permissions.

ScribbleJ

@bereft_penguin @MetropleX Thank you both for the suggestions. I was about to give up on it for a while and come back to Graphene when I have time to really dig into the code but you've given me enough hope to try a few more times. Two more questions:

1) bereft_penguin Do you mention 2022053100 specifically because it's what you're running, or should I see if I can install that specific release for some success? I'm on latest Pixel 4a 5G/bramble right now, 2022060701

2) Is there an Android equivalent of strace or something I should use to see what the Wear OS app is doing just before it fails? It's seems as though it's encountering some specific problem and not just timing out but it's not at all clear what that may be.

bereft_penguin

ScribbleJ I only mentioned that release because that was when I tested my watch 4 again and it worked. I am currently running the latest release without issue and downgrading isn't supported by android. The Samsung watches don't use the wear OS companion app but Samsung's own app, it's possible it is working solely due to an update there. I also had the google app installed this time around, I'm not sure if that implements anymore necessary API's. I am sorry the wear os app is giving you trouble provisioning the watch. I can't speak much about android debugging, hopefully one of the maintainers can chime in. I do know about adb logcat, which may provide some insight, but unfortunately I can't provide usage examples. Hope this helps!

MetropleX

bereft_penguin I do know about adb logcat,

Thanks for providing ScribbleJ with further information again, I don't use a smartwatch, prefer my Casio Royale personally :D. Just to add use of adb on production devices isn't advised and the best way to get logs is to use Developer Options (only advised use on a production device) where you can tap 'Bug Report' followed by using 'interactive' and recreating the issue. Once the bug report is captured you can try to isolate the error yourself or contact a developer to send it to as it may/can contain sensitive information.

Let me know if you require further help on the latter.

ScribbleJ

@MetropleX @bereft_penguin Thanks again to both of you for the suggestions - I've been playing around with logcat and it seems like it would be plenty verbose to solve the issue -- if I had all the other requisite knowledge! And to the point about the Casio, I wish I'd chosen a slightly less-smart watch like a Pebble but - bygones!

I'm performing a complete reset on the phone and I'll try to get the Wear working before I do anything else -- if that fails I'll probably have to shelve GrapheneOS until I have more time. I understand that whatever's gone wrong is far more likely to be a case of Google not following the rules than any bug in Graphene, but I doubt I'll get to the bottom of it.

For the record, here's the part of the log that seems interesting that's happening right when the process gives up -- but there are a few interesting errors and stack traces further up the log that may also prove to be relevant. I'll take your advice about sending it to a dev or as a real bug report as soon as I've got some confidence I've tried everything I can and isolated the problem. (I'm skeptical that the solution would be as simple as changing enableConnection() to enableDeviceConnection() in the source code.)

06-12 15:08:58.032 28819 28819 I CreateBtBondAction: ACTION_DISCOVERY_FINISHED received, proceeding to create bond.
06-12 15:08:58.076 28819 28819 I CreateBtBondAction: CreateBondActionReceiver received state: 11, previous state: 10
06-12 15:09:21.114 28819 28819 I PairingController: pairing in progress
06-12 15:09:21.696 28819 28819 I CreateBtBondAction: CreateBondActionReceiver received state: 12, previous state: 11
06-12 15:09:21.697 28819 28936 I CwSetup.CreateConfig: creating ConnectionConfiguration for: [CENSORED]
06-12 15:09:21.698 28819 28819 I PairingController: device bonded
06-12 15:09:21.727 28819 28936 I CwSetup.CreateConfig: trying to find connected ConnectionConfiguration
06-12 15:10:06.773 28819 28936 I CwSetup.CreateConfig: re-enabling connection
06-12 15:10:06.774 17668 17697 E WearableService: enableConnection is no longer supported. Use enableDeviceConnection instead.
06-12 15:10:06.775 28819 28936 E CwSetup.CreateConfig: Unable to enable connection.
06-12 15:10:06.776 28819 28936 I CwSetup.CreateConfig: finished creating ConnectionConfiguration: CreateConfigTask.Result{ isSuccess=false, mConfig=null }
06-12 15:10:06.776 28819 28936 E CwSetup.SetupJob: Failed to create ConnectionConfiguration
06-12 15:10:06.791 28819 28819 E PairingController: pairing failed
06-12 15:10:06.794 28819 28936 I BluetoothDevice: cancelBondProcess() for device [CENSORED] called by pid: 28819 tid: 28936

bereft_penguin

ScribbleJ I found a very similar, if not identical issue here, for a different wear os device and an Xperia phone running what appears to be the stock os. There is no solution unfortunately, but you may be able to track down more information from that post.

mafrasi2

From the description (I didn't check the logs), it seems I had the same issue, albeit with a Samsung Watch 4 classic.

What I think worked for me was giving GMS permission for "access to nearby devices".

shandoosheri

mafrasi2 this worked for me as well. thank you

gruntlord6

mafrasi2 how did you get gms installed? Is it just part of google play services?

MetropleX

gruntlord6 yes GMS and Play Services are terms that are sometimes used interchangeably.

icipher

I've also managed to configure a Galaxy Watch 4 by following the tips in this thread (installed the 3 Google apps in sandbox mode and allowed nearby devices).

I'm currently running gms sandboxed but in the owner profile to get all the notifications such as phone, SMS, IM, etc to work. I haven't sign in with Samsung or google accounts, yet, I don't feel that comfortable with this config. What is your opinion regarding this? Did you manage to get the same but with a work profile? What kind of data am I providing to the big players besides the one described in GrapheneOS docs?

[deleted]

So do you have to set nearby devices for google play services or all 3 sandboxed play store, gps, gsf?

icipher

In my case, I had to install play store, play services (gms) and gsf with nearby for play services