Database Users

Nice alternative to sucky Samsung desktop dock app

I have the overpriced desktop dock accessory, and contrary to some others here, I really like it. This thread is not for arguing that point, please -- there are already several others where you can't vent your hatred of this accessory
Like others, I find the Samsung docking app buggy, crappy, and, after seeing the screen burn-in from some others, I got rid of it. Only tried it briefly anyway.
So, what to do?
Well, if you have tasker and the clock app from the Syndicate ROM (is that the stock clock app? I never tried it before Syndicate, so I have no idea), you come real close to achieving the same result -- i.e., have the app start when you dock, quit when you undock.
Two things I like most about the clock app vs. the Sammy dock app: It shows the local weather, and this can be set up to work off of GPS (if you want -- optional) so it's always local no matter where you are, and most important, it has a nice dim green time/date display after the device sleep times out that jumps around on a black background so there's no possibility of screen burn-in.
Now the one downside: Tasker doesn't seem to capture dock/undock events from Eclair on the Epic. These events are obviously there, somewhere, as the Samsung app can detect it.
So, a alternative must be used to detect the docking. I chose to use the AC Power state, as this is as close to narrowing down a state that is always "on" when docked.
I tried playing with adding some orientation conditions, but it turns out that when tilted back in the dock, it's neither "on left side" or "facing up" according to the sensor interpretation.
Anyway, this works very nicely. If anyone can come up with an even better context for tasker to further narrow the trigger to just docking, it would be much appreciated!
Of course, the ultimate solution is for tasker to correctely detect docking state on the Epic, for which I am going to write the dev.

[Q] Disabling Bluetooth AD2P Audio Autoplay

Hey everyone. So I find I have an annoying issue that is kind of pissing me off. I guess a majority of car makers have this wonderful "feature" that sends a "play" signal to the phone while connecting. This would be nice IF I could pick the app it would play with but the epic and other phones like to pick the defauly music player.
The downside is that I tend to stream pandora or slacker while on the road so each morning I get 2 songs playing at once lol.... rather annoying. I then need to load the music player and stop it. There are some good parts to what the cars do....like if an incoming call is answered it pauses the active player (usually slacker for me) while on the call.
Does anyone have any ideas on how to change any of this behavior? I guess that would have to be a kernel change or possibly a bluetooth apk if there is one? I would love to try to find a way to leave the pause portion there for calls but maybe like a check if there is a active player on top then play or pause is OK, but if in background, dont do anything.
I have searched a lot on this and it seems to be a common issue. But I just wanted to see if anyone has any ideas. I tried the app "autostarts" but it complains about not having root access even though the phone is rooted so that isnt an option it seems. It's probably wishful thinking, but was hoping maybe someone has an idea.
Or is there something I could use to kill Music Player for example "if" it was auto started and not run by me directly?

I suppose you could use a task killer and set it to kill the music player whenever it starts up. You could always disable it when your not using it. I wouldn't use it for anything else besides the music player that you wish to kill.

The problem I see with that is with most task killers they use a timer... unless I am missing one that will kill it automatically when it opens? The downside to that is if I use another app to monitor that app I have a feeling I am going to kill my battery life if it constantly monitoring.

You may be able to do this using tasker. It's not free (five bucks) and it's a bit complicated, but there is a week's trial on the developer's website.
I'm not allowed to post links, but just google tasker for android. The version in the market doesn't have the trial, though.The one on the developer's website is a buck cheaper and offers a trial.
If you aren't familiar with it, you can basically use it to take any input the phone uses (phone, sms, location data, gesture, bluetooth data, whatever) and make it output any event, so you could have it give a media all stop command every time you connect it to bluetooth. You could even have it automatically bring up a little menu with pandora, music player, last FM.. whatever media players you use.. after that. You could probably even get it to perform different behaviors depending on which bluetooth radio you connected to (so you could have it do something different in your car than in your friend's car for instance).
It's really a lifesaver of a program, well worth the five bucks I dropped on it, it's replace multiple other apps in my life. Not trying to sound too much like a commercial, but I have every reason to think it would do what you want. It is a bit complicated until you get the hang of it, though.

megabillzilla said:
You may be able to do this using tasker. It's not free (five bucks) and it's a bit complicated, but there is a week's trial on the developer's website.
I'm not allowed to post links, but just google tasker for android. The version in the market doesn't have the trial, though.The one on the developer's website is a buck cheaper and offers a trial.
If you aren't familiar with it, you can basically use it to take any input the phone uses (phone, sms, location data, gesture, bluetooth data, whatever) and make it output any event, so you could have it give a media all stop command every time you connect it to bluetooth. You could even have it automatically bring up a little menu with pandora, music player, last FM.. whatever media players you use.. after that. You could probably even get it to perform different behaviors depending on which bluetooth radio you connected to (so you could have it do something different in your car than in your friend's car for instance).
It's really a lifesaver of a program, well worth the five bucks I dropped on it, it's replace multiple other apps in my life. Not trying to sound too much like a commercial, but I have every reason to think it would do what you want. It is a bit complicated until you get the hang of it, though.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1... was just about to say, Tasker can do it. Tasker has been the best $5 I've spent in a loonnnng time.
I got tired of getting up in the morning for my 1.5 hour morning commute (gotta drop the kid off to daycare in another county) and getting to work late because it had been rainy and terrible. Setting the alarm crazy early just to check and see if the weather was any good was not a pleasant prospect, and with winter on the way, I needed a solution.
So I spent an evening with Tasker. I had it perform an HTTP GET at Accuweather.com after passing my zip code to the website. I then had it search the returned text for words such as "rain", "snow" and storm". It runs this search at about 5:00 AM, and dependent upon the result, sets an alarm (with a snooze function that I programmed in). After the initial alarm, since I knew I'd be too tired to pay much attention to WHY it had woken me up early, I have it speak out loud "Good morning, you have been woken early today because it is [X weather] and [X degrees, after performing a Celcius to Farenheit conversion]. It is currently [time].
I plan on posting the Tasker profile to my blog in a couple days after I'm sure it contains no bugs (it'll probably snow in the morning so I'll be able to test that scenario).
Anyhow, this just gives a taste of what Tasker can do. I have it launch a list of apps when I plug into the headset jack, silence my phone if I get within 300 meters of work, or sound an alarm, vibrate, flash an LED, take pictures, and redirect outgoing calls to my girlfriend's phone if I send it a certain text message, to name a few very useful profiles I've got set up.
Tasker does everything without forcing you to learn any syntax or do any coding at all. It would be a matter of minutes to set up a scenario where, if you connect via Bluetooth, it waits a moment and terminates the default video player application and then launches the other application you want to use. One of the profiles I've forgotten to mention is one that, when I launch Navigation with the GPS off, closes Navigation, enables GPS, and loads Navigation back up. When I'm in the car I just want to touch Navigation, not screw with GPS settings.
Anyhow, enough of my gushing about Tasker. Seriously, best $5 app you'll ever buy. Trust me.

That might be pretty nice... wonder if it can tell the difference between a bluetooth headset and AD2P. I'll have to try it. Wonder if it could start my car with its application too like 30 min after my alarm hehe.
Sent from my Emotionless Beast Epic 4G via Tapatalk Pro

I've been playing with Tasker and it will do what I need Thanks! I ended up setting up a profile that when it connects to my vehicle only, it will kill music player, wait 3 seconds and then kill it again... it took that due to the fact the car doesnt send the play signal for a few seconds.

List of Problems with the Nexus 7

I received my Google Nexus 7 tablet in the mail a few days ago. While I believe it's a good step forward, I couldn't help but to be annoying by the many little problems I've had with it so far. Below is a partial list of problems I've had with it. I'd love it if someone could give an explanation why Google decided to ship the Nexus 7 with these problems and hope Google fixes them or changes their priorities to address problems like these in the future.
My unformatted list of Nexus 7 problems:
Cannot use Google Voice to make phone calls without downloading a fix from third party software makers. What’s the point of the Google Voice app if by default it doesn’t allow you to make/receive phone calls?
Cannot place custom makers such as “girlfriend’s house” or “grandma’s house” or “picnic spot” in the Navigate app. You cannot say “navigate to grandma’s house” to Google Now.
The Navigate app seems to have enough deficiencies that I question whether it is actually a working app meant to help you navigate. First, you must preload an area if you ever plan on using it to navigate. Second, you must ask to navigate before you leave home while you still have a wireless signal. Third, if while navigating you make a wrong turn the navigation stops working because it tries to recalculates the route then stops when it tries to find the new route and determines the data connection (your wireless network) is no longer available. It also seems to be missing many common navigation features like estimating your speed, miles traveled, or helping to calculate gas mileage (allowing you to input gas amount at fill ups).
When opening search results from Google Now in Chrome two tabs are always opened at the same time. Also, loading pages in Chrome after a Google Now takes too much time. While on my home broadband connection it take 8, 9, or 10 seconds to load a page. It seems like more is going on than simply loading a web page (maybe a few redirects for Google to record/register the search result you picked in order to improve Google Now?).
The main screen, your desktop, does not orient itself based on how you are holding the tablet, while apps can and do. As far as I know, you have to root the tablet and edit some files to get this behavior. This leads me to ask, why didn’t Google just include an option/setting to give the user a choice?
In Google Music the track position slider is placed too close to the next/prior/play/pause/stop buttons. Attempting to move the position regularly results in a pause/stop instead. This is a big pain for resuming audio books when the place marker gets lost if you ever switch tracks (listening to music before the 6 hour audio book is complete). The position slider is also too small (again consider seeking in a 6 hour audio book file). When in landscape mode Google Music splits the controls on one side of the screen and cover art on the other. The net effect is there is no configuration to provide a large track position slider.
Google Play does offer a way to search or browse all widgets. You can see a list of “top widgets”, but when you search it searches for everything, that is all apps and not just for widgets.
Some apps which include widgets are not showing as available for for placement on my desktop. They don’t appear in the list of available widgets. Specifically I downloaded an FTP app with a desktop widget to quickly enable/disable the FTP server. This widget is not to be found in my availble list of widgets.
The “My Library” widget is awkward and hard to use. I am not even sure if it works correctly. I have several podcasts and audio books, but when click their tiles in the “My Library” widget, nothing happens.
Options are a mess. My eyesight is really poor and getting worse. I can use options in one place to increase the fonts size, and that same option is missing or moved somewhere else in another application. Even the options buttons move around from app to app. Regarding text size, on a PC at least I can change the font size system wide by changing display properties in one place.
While the voice search in Google Now, there are certain chinks in its voice recognition which become frustrating very quickly. I tried to send my friend an email about the “olympics day one”, and it kept thinking I saying “olympics they want” even though I was speaking cleanly and clearly with a mid west american accent. Similar misunderstanding have happened occasionally, and when I try to correct them by speaking again and again, the voe recognition gets it wrong every time. Eventually I give up and manually type out my words.

Literally none of those are at fault of the N7. These are all software issues.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

OP here.
Yes, I am not specifically having problems the hardware. I am finding annoyances with how the software works on the hardware. When I say Google Voice doesn't allow allow phone calls, yes that's a software problem.

It's a quad core 7 inch tablet for $199...stop nitpicking!!!
Seriously? Do you use tablets on a regular basis? Do you use android extensively? Because anyone who does, realizes that, in comparison, Jellybean on nexus 7 is pretty damn decent for a first release. So giving feedback on issues is great and will help Google improve-but saying you are annoyed that a tablet(any kind) has issues a couple of weeks after being on the market with brand new software...clearly shows how unrealistic your expectations actually are. Furthermore, to address some of your comments more specifically: (1)This tablet is wifi only-mainly to save on cost. That means you cannot really use GPS in the same way as a 3G enabled device. (2) Voice recognition is rarely precise and Siri has a ton of issues(I Have the new iphone and ipad) (3) Please do not compare font rendering to a PC-this is a 7 inch tablet-not something10 times bgger (4) Finally...what on earth are you doing with a 7 inch tablet if your eyesight is failing so much?
sysrpl said:
I received my Google Nexus 7 tablet in the mail a few days ago. While I believe it's a good step forward, I couldn't help but to be annoying by the many little problems I've had with it so far. Below is a partial list of problems I've had with it. I'd love it if someone could give an explanation why Google decided to ship the Nexus 7 with these problems and hope Google fixes them or changes their priorities to address problems like these in the future.
My unformatted list of Nexus 7 problems:
Cannot use Google Voice to make phone calls without downloading a fix from third party software makers. What’s the point of the Google Voice app if by default it doesn’t allow you to make/receive phone calls?
Cannot place custom makers such as “girlfriend’s house” or “grandma’s house” or “picnic spot” in the Navigate app. You cannot say “navigate to grandma’s house” to Google Now.
The Navigate app seems to have enough deficiencies that I question whether it is actually a working app meant to help you navigate. First, you must preload an area if you ever plan on using it to navigate. Second, you must ask to navigate before you leave home while you still have a wireless signal. Third, if while navigating you make a wrong turn the navigation stops working because it tries to recalculates the route then stops when it tries to find the new route and determines the data connection (your wireless network) is no longer available. It also seems to be missing many common navigation features like estimating your speed, miles traveled, or helping to calculate gas mileage (allowing you to input gas amount at fill ups).
When opening search results from Google Now in Chrome two tabs are always opened at the same time. Also, loading pages in Chrome after a Google Now takes too much time. While on my home broadband connection it take 8, 9, or 10 seconds to load a page. It seems like more is going on than simply loading a web page (maybe a few redirects for Google to record/register the search result you picked in order to improve Google Now?).
The main screen, your desktop, does not orient itself based on how you are holding the tablet, while apps can and do. As far as I know, you have to root the tablet and edit some files to get this behavior. This leads me to ask, why didn’t Google just include an option/setting to give the user a choice?
In Google Music the track position slider is placed too close to the next/prior/play/pause/stop buttons. Attempting to move the position regularly results in a pause/stop instead. This is a big pain for resuming audio books when the place marker gets lost if you ever switch tracks (listening to music before the 6 hour audio book is complete). The position slider is also too small (again consider seeking in a 6 hour audio book file). When in landscape mode Google Music splits the controls on one side of the screen and cover art on the other. The net effect is there is no configuration to provide a large track position slider.
Google Play does offer a way to search or browse all widgets. You can see a list of “top widgets”, but when you search it searches for everything, that is all apps and not just for widgets.
Some apps which include widgets are not showing as available for for placement on my desktop. They don’t appear in the list of available widgets. Specifically I downloaded an FTP app with a desktop widget to quickly enable/disable the FTP server. This widget is not to be found in my availble list of widgets.
The “My Library” widget is awkward and hard to use. I am not even sure if it works correctly. I have several podcasts and audio books, but when click their tiles in the “My Library” widget, nothing happens.
Options are a mess. My eyesight is really poor and getting worse. I can use options in one place to increase the fonts size, and that same option is missing or moved somewhere else in another application. Even the options buttons move around from app to app. Regarding text size, on a PC at least I can change the font size system wide by changing display properties in one place.
While the voice search in Google Now, there are certain chinks in its voice recognition which become frustrating very quickly. I tried to send my friend an email about the “olympics day one”, and it kept thinking I saying “olympics they want” even though I was speaking cleanly and clearly with a mid west american accent. Similar misunderstanding have happened occasionally, and when I try to correct them by speaking again and again, the voe recognition gets it wrong every time. Eventually I give up and manually type out my words.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

While the Nexus 7 has alot going for it, I still agree with the OP. There are still some basic hardware (unchangable) shortcomings that should have been addressed in this product. I am not a tablet expert and the Nexus 7 is my first android device. Don't hold this against me. As someone who shouldn't yet have the skills to push the boundaries of the device here is my list of deficiencies:
-Back-side hi-res camera. Yes, you look odd taking pictures with a tablet but you look weirder taking pictures over your head facing the wrong way. Tablet cams have their place and are useful for a number of things. They are especially handy in the smaller format 7" tablets.
-4 conductor headphone/microphone jack instead of the 3 conductor headphone jack. The Nexus 7 tablet has poor accoustic performance for making VoIP calls with the builtin speaker and mic. By including this style of jack they would have overcome this issue. One of the main reasons for travelling with a laptop or tablet is to use Wifi hotspts to make free VoIP calls home. With the poor acoustics of the Nexus 7 and no way around them, this tablet is a poor solution for the traveller and I would recommend something else.
-ability to connect with the mic of a bluetooth headset. While the Nexus 7 has Bluetooth, it will not connect to a Bluetooth headset and allow the mic to work. The mic of a bluetooth headset could offer another way around the lousy acoustical design. This would not mean that the 4 conductor jack should be excluded as when you are travelling it is nice to not have another device to power.
- micro SD slot. This one is big. The absence of this slot is the one thing that really made me think twice about buying the product. With no way to add memory, I'm boxed in and I don't have the easy trasfer or files that the SD card brings. While 16 G seems enough now, add some movies, music and offline maps and quickly the memory is full. This is 2012. Memory is cheap and will become cheaper. So why pin me down?
Some might wish for the HDMI port but this is not too important for me.

LttrX said:
-Back-side hi-res camera. Yes, you look odd taking pictures with a tablet but you look weirder taking pictures over your head facing the wrong way. Tablet cams have their place and are useful for a number of things. They are especially handy in the smaller format 7" tablets.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Seriously, your Nexus 7 can be configured to have the best camera experience BAR NONE, even the latest Apple iPhone 5 will be totally lame in comparison (disclaimer, it's more expensive, but what the heck, it's really darn cool!!!)
Nexus 7 used as HD monitor and controller with ultra-high-resolution DSLR camera
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4X6olWN3-g
Of course this is tongue in cheek, I'd also really like a single device to carry that does a much better job of taking pictures. However, for a little more I could have gotten a tab that had the camera, but half the processor/graphics performance. I purchased it knowing it didn't have the back-side camera.
LttrX said:
-4 conductor headphone/microphone jack instead of the 3 conductor headphone jack. The Nexus 7 tablet has poor acoustic performance for making VoIP calls with the builtin speaker and mic. By including this style of jack they would have overcome this issue. One of the main reasons for travelling with a laptop or tablet is to use Wifi hotspts to make free VoIP calls home. With the poor acoustics of the Nexus 7 and no way around them, this tablet is a poor solution for the traveller and I would recommend something else.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is this just a three conductor jack? Or is it possible that it is a 4 conductor and the software support is just absent? The tear downs don't show the solder pads, so it's difficult to tell. But the traces indicate more conductors than a 3 conductor jack would require.
LttrX said:
-ability to connect with the mic of a bluetooth headset. While the Nexus 7 has Bluetooth, it will not connect to a Bluetooth headset and allow the mic to work. The mic of a bluetooth headset could offer another way around the lousy acoustical design. This would not mean that the 4 conductor jack should be excluded as when you are travelling it is nice to not have another device to power.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Confirmed this with my Plantronics BackBeat 903 Stereo bluetooth headset. I suspect that this is a software issue, as that is simply more content to stream via bluetooth. Perhaps this will be in 4.1.2? Let's add this to the Google requests... http://support.google.com/nexus/bin/request.py?contact_type=contact_policy
LttrX said:
- micro SD slot. This one is big. The absence of this slot is the one thing that really made me think twice about buying the product. With no way to add memory, I'm boxed in and I don't have the easy trasfer or files that the SD card brings. While 16 G seems enough now, add some movies, music and offline maps and quickly the memory is full. This is 2012. Memory is cheap and will become cheaper. So why pin me down?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not a perfect solution and no where the same in functionality, but I use a MicroSD to MicroUSB adapter. Using an app allows me to access content from the SD, but not to install apps there. Google could write code to allow native mounting from the USB port, but will they?
I'm not sure they left this out due to cost, as the parts are supper cheap. I'm more inclined to think it's a way to enforce us to embrace their Cloud architecture vis-a-vie Google Play and streamed movies/music. But Wi-Fi isn't ubiquitous enough to really pull that off yet. Strongly wish a MicroSD was present, but I purchased knowing this was the case.
LttrX said:
Some might wish for the HDMI port but this is not too important for me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Perhaps we'll see Miracast? HD via Wireless. Apparently the Tegra3 SOC used supports it, so it may be a matter for Google to code for it.

Wow, I've had my N7 since July 21st and never realized how crappy it is!!!!!!

Holly crow!!! "Nexus 7 used as HD monitor and controller with ultra-high-resolution DSLR camera" :cyclops:
That was gay. err Funny and weird. err puzzling and stupid. emm okay just really gay. (no offence intended)

[Q] Program NFC tag to switch between 2G/3G?

Hi!
Tried searching for this, but I couldnt find a good answer. Running newest CM10.1 Nightly, and unfortunately the profiles doesnt seem to support 2G/3G toggle.
I tried working my way through it, but all I could find was having NFC Task Launcher start a Tasker Task which then turned toggled network type. Seems like a lot of hassle for such a simple thing?

But think of the time you will save if this is something you do often. Sometimes setting up the tags takes time, but you save a lot of time in the long run...

AW: [Q] Program NFC tag to switch between 2G/3G?
Hi, probably you could use Llama instead of those two apps... (although I don't like Llama that much)
I also have a question: what distance do you reach with your tags? I believe that mine are bad! They have to touch the back glass (and even don't work everytime) - and don't work through my 1mm plastic phone protection! Is that normal? I thought of at least ~1cm?!

Cheap Chinese Watch, Won't Push SMS, A Way Fix or Buy Something Else?

Last night I got one of those cheap Chinese smartwatches for $40 locally. (Amazon seems to have some for $20 at amzn.to/2qpSftK) Yeah I know, I know, but I work at a job that is anal about cell phones (a major gripe of mine the way places can be that way) and I need to know if my child's ride at school doesn't show up or if school lets out early due to a power outage etc, if that happens then I HAVE to pause what I'm doing and make a call or two to make pickup arrangements or else it's a legal issue of child abandonment. Such may only happen 2-3 times an entire school year, but it has happened a few times--my mother-in-law's battery was dead and she was running late, or she couldn't find her keys etc--in such cases I had to track down someone locally and get them to step-in, last minute.
Thus, I need a smartwatch which can relay calls which have come in so I can see them and it also needs to push SMS messages and let me reply to them, that way without even pulling my phone out of my pocket I will know if this has occurred (and can quickly reply to SMS) but I can otherwise keep my phone in my pocket knowing beyond any shadow of a doubt that if a call or SMS has come in, this watch WILL pick it up and I WILL be able to reply to them.
This watch I got, it is fine with relaying phone calls and it even relayed the audio from a YouTube video I was watching on the phone itself, but it WILL NOT WORK with relaying SMS. At first it did, such requires installing a "BT Notifier" on the phone (which is the best?) but even then it was hit or miss, and then it just stopped. I've done EVERYTHING in terms of different BT Notifier apps, I even scanned the "OCR Code" or whatever to point to the BT Notifier specific to that model (it appears to be a GT08 type, with the "fan" style of icons, menu/phone on the bottom left and names/text on the right, this YouTube video Ksy0pd-12BI shows one like it), I set that app up--no matter, IT WILL NOT push SMS to this smartwatch, no way/no how.
Is this a common occurrence with such smartwatches? Is this a case of that I'm going to have to just accept this model CANNOT handle SMS no matter what and get something else, vs being able to actually fix this? One model I had read good things about in an article (BIT and 2lTVoxg) called the OUMAX Bluetooth Smart Watch S6 for around $50, this model looked like a good one because it downplays "fitness" features I do not at all need and instead stresses pushing smartphone notifications and being able to replay to them, which is what I DO need. I started to get it on Amazon but then it would've required several days to get here and I need something up & running quickly but without spending $250. Maybe I should've just gotten that and waited?
Tips in general?

If anyone has any tips please do reply, I am only say this because I have an update but that doesn't mean I am not still looking for help.
I've somehow got it working just fine, no timing out of connectivity or any such thing. I had saved the downloaded BT Notifier .apk file from the app it referenced in the barcode I scanned, and I tried again but this time I disabled an app I've used on the phone for a long time--NoLED, which displays a moving dot on the LCD when notifications arrive, making it unnecessary to "wake up" the phone to see missed calls etc. I've used that app for forever, it's a long-time staple of mine, but I wondered if it was possibly interfering with this process.
I'm not sure if that is the case, but since disabling it (but also turning the watch off and letting it charge to full overnight) it's working great today. I possibly could get beyond that eventually but for now I'll take it, I mean having a smartwatch does somewhat make it less necessary anyway. The only issue now--the band, it won't attach and it's apparently a permanent part of the watch's structure, not easily swapped out. I'm not sure how I'll get around that, maybe stitching another watch band on top of it using a sewing kit?

Ultimate Fix: Watch-Specific App/Disable/Install 3rd Party
I'm somewhat disappointed in the lack of replies. Is this because this watch is now perhaps an older model, or what is the reason?
In any case, I now have the ultimate fix.
It's 3 things:
(1) Install the watch-specific app by scanning the QR code and "sideloading" the app
(2) "Force Stop" this app in Google settings but DO NOT uninstall it, leave it installed.
(3) Install the 3rd party app by "Shenznen Fan Yun Technology Co, Ltd" (green background, white circle with exclamation point) then under the "Accessibility" enable the second "BT Notifications" entry, leave the 1st one at OFF
When I got this watch, the first thing I did was download that 3rd party app, it worked some but not consistently, then it totally stopped. I then stumbled across the QR code in the watch, scanned it, installed that app, and that worked--but that app was FULL of adware, constantly bugging me to install this app or that, launching a new tab and page in my Chrome browser, and just being a total pain. I was glad the watch worked, but hated that behavior--so much I disabled the app, figuring I'd just have to re-enable it when the watch was being used.
On a hunch, eager to try again, with the watch-specific app still disabled, I downloaded the 3rd party "Shenznen Fan Yun Technology Co, Ltd" app and, just totally guessing, under "accessibility" enabled the 2nd entry (both entries have identical names so you can't tell which is which), but didn't uninstall the watch-specific app only because I figured that I would end up having to revert back to it anyway.
To my surprise, this has worked. It seems to require me turning the watch off and connecting through the watch initially, but however I get a connection and the SMS message log on the phone populates on the watch, at that point it is stable and reliable from that point on. I had it running today all-day and was receiving texts and the inbox was coming up reliably.
I hope this helps somebody. (Note: this watch is still being sold as eBay item #381686066028.)