Got my U8 today and here's my initial impression:
Plus - 1. Immediately went to English, no Chinese. EZ setup. 2. Several choices for watch faces. Several choices for menu icons. Some are color and big. 3. Love the vibration for notification. 4. Speaker while on phone good. 5. Phone pick up works good.
Cons - 1. Washes out in sunlight bad. That's a show stopper for me. 2. Have to turn off phone Bluetooth and use handset for a private call. Switch is in my phone app and simple but still. 3. I use Touchdown for email and it doesn't notify on the watch. Working on that. 4. Band seems a bit 'soft', not hard rubber.
Added Con - Not having the watch face constantly lit is driving me nuts!
rogerperk said:
Got my U8 today and here's my initial impression:
Plus - 1. Immediately went to English, no Chinese. EZ setup. 2. Several choices for watch faces. Several choices for menu icons. Some are color and big. 3. Love the vibration for notification. 4. Speaker while on phone good. 5. Phone pick up works good.
Cons - 1. Washes out in sunlight bad. That's a show stopper for me. 2. Have to turn off phone Bluetooth and use handset for a private call. Switch is in my phone app and simple but still. 3. I use Touchdown for email and it doesn't notify on the watch. Working on that. 4. Band seems a bit 'soft', not hard rubber.
Added Con - Not having the watch face constantly lit is driving me nuts!
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Click to collapse
Hi rogerperk,
Some image to your statement is very much appreciate.
Thanks
I was just looking at one of these on ebay today. Are you able to reply to text messages through it? Does it have voice input as well as a keyboard?
Artimis said:
I was just looking at one of these on ebay today. Are you able to reply to text messages through it? Does it have voice input as well as a keyboard?
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I bought a Pebble. Regardless of whether the U8 has voice input or not if I can't see the face they it's useless to me. And outside that is the case. If that doesn't matter then I'd be willing to sell you mine for a cheaper price than you'll get on line. Wore it a total of 2 days.
rogerperk said:
I bought a Pebble. Regardless of whether the U8 has voice input or not if I can't see the face they it's useless to me. And outside that is the case. If that doesn't matter then I'd be willing to sell you mine for a cheaper price than you'll get on line. Wore it a total of 2 days.
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Click to collapse
Thanks but I'll pass. I'm going to stick with my MotoActv for now unless I can pick up a cheap Galaxy Gear or either the LG G-watch or Moto360 convinces me when released.
Artimis said:
Thanks but I'll pass. I'm going to stick with my MotoActv for now unless I can pick up a cheap Galaxy Gear or either the LG G-watch or Moto360 convinces me when released.
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LOL good choice! The longer I have my Pebble the better I like it.
Just got mine today
Hey Roger,
Been following another thread ("Elegance U8") and now this one since ordering mine off Ebay a week ago. Got it in the mail today, and I can see your points for both pro and con.
Here are my questions, if anyone knows. (yet)
I remember seeing what the actual phone OS is called somewhere, but can't find it now. EDIT: It's called "Nucleus." Have found some info and a sample download online. Might try and see if I can learn how to develop for it.Though the device plays nice with Android and ios, it's actually neither of those things. If someone knows what the name of it is, is it possible to find a tutorial on coding it somewhere?
The initial reason I ask is:
Not waiting for the manufacturer to patch the "shut off screen" function. I'd like to see if I can figure out how to do this myself, and
Enabling texting. Rather than a traditional keyboard, am thinking a sliding alphabet. A - slide to B - slide to C, etc. A pain in the butt, but probably less so than trying to use a keyboard. Picture the "carousel" from the Kindle Fire series, but with letters / numbers / symbols. Also, as suggested earlier in this thread texting with use of the mic, if possible.
Not saying I'd be able to do any of this, but I have limited experience doing some dev work in Android (through Unity) and am wondering if it's possible to self teach this OS, figuring that we quite probably won't see a lot of feature updates from whoever the manufacturer is of this product.
Thanks, and God bless.
If you do develop, please keep us updated. i like the watch but would love to be able to reply to messages. let me know if i can help any also in the development
Does anyone have the latest firmware for the smart watch?
Mine is: M28_KHR.FN1.V04
Regards.
Conect, was wondering if you'd gotten anywhere with OS development for this watch?
Is this the one you got,this is the one i have but the icons and analog faces are different... ?
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/311154443880?_trksid=p2060778.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT
Conect11 said:
Hey Roger,
Been following another thread ("Elegance U8") and now this one since ordering mine off Ebay a week ago. Got it in the mail today, and I can see your points for both pro and con.
Here are my questions, if anyone knows. (yet)
I remember seeing what the actual phone OS is called somewhere, but can't find it now. EDIT: It's called "Nucleus." Have found some info and a sample download online. Might try and see if I can learn how to develop for it.Though the device plays nice with Android and ios, it's actually neither of those things. If someone knows what the name of it is, is it possible to find a tutorial on coding it somewhere?
The initial reason I ask is:
Not waiting for the manufacturer to patch the "shut off screen" function. I'd like to see if I can figure out how to do this myself, and
Enabling texting. Rather than a traditional keyboard, am thinking a sliding alphabet. A - slide to B - slide to C, etc. A pain in the butt, but probably less so than trying to use a keyboard. Picture the "carousel" from the Kindle Fire series, but with letters / numbers / symbols. Also, as suggested earlier in this thread texting with use of the mic, if possible.
Not saying I'd be able to do any of this, but I have limited experience doing some dev work in Android (through Unity) and am wondering if it's possible to self teach this OS, figuring that we quite probably won't see a lot of feature updates from whoever the manufacturer is of this product.
Thanks, and God bless.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've had my watch for about a week now, and I gotta say, for the price, it's pretty killer! I wish there was more development for it besides distributing firmware and flash tools.
I've noticed that when you activate Google Voice search and texting with the watch connected, it uses the watch mic to pick up your voice. I was thinking it might be cool to find a way to trigger voice search and voice texting from the watch, since you can already use it for voice input as long as you trigger the feature on your phone. Have you made any progress on trying to develop for the u8?
Also, I believe I read that they're going to release an SDK for MediaTek devices, such as this watch. Might be interesting to see if anything comes of that.
Wish there was a way to add a count down timer to this watch. It needs to have the timer with a start/stop button on the screen as well a reset button for the timer. so If I set it to 30secons, when I hit the reset after the 30s is up it will reset it back to 30secs again.
I need to root my phone so I can turn off a few notifications that I do not want to transmit.
driver instalation problem
helo,
maybe in wrong thread, but if anyone could help i would be grateful. my windows 8 dont recognise u8 watch, and i cant install provided drivers for vista. i'm stuck, and i would like to instal firmware, but without watch been recognised its not posible. thanx
Is there a way to make the U8 vibrate when you receive a text message or have a phone call?
I was wondering if anyone has found a way to get different faces on this watch. I believe mine may be a clone.
I am looking for a smart watch. I want to be able to use it as a standalone music player and use google now. I have done my research (internet and xda forum) and I haven’t seen a good watch that meets both criteria. From my research it appears that a Tizen allows a Gear to act as a stand-alone music player but prohibits the use of Google Now/Android Wear.
From what I have read the Null Rom will let me use Google Now (I do believe) but I can’t use it as a stand-alone music player.
Have I missed anything? Your help would be appreciated.
hardwirk1 said:
I am looking for a smart watch. I want to be able to use it as a standalone music player and use google now. I have done my research (internet and xda forum) and I haven’t seen a good watch that meets both criteria. From my research it appears that a Tizen allows a Gear to act as a stand-alone music player but prohibits the use of Google Now/Android Wear.
From what I have read the Null Rom will let me use Google Now (I do believe) but I can’t use it as a stand-alone music player.
Have I missed anything? Your help would be appreciated.
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I've been away (from the XDA Smartwatch forum) for two months and not much has changed, understandable, but 2014 will be the smartwatch year.
I've been waiting for a decent Standalone too. The new Gear S seems very good, but the battery life (two days) seems poor, because its usual half of that or less.
The inWatch Z seems like a good overall watch, but its 2G, not really IP67 (or whatever it claims to be) but its the best so far, with a good battery life.
Other alternative is to watch out for the Chinese/Shenzhen clones as some of them are proving to be better then the originals, but most usually lack firmware updates.
I've made a standalone and clones/Shenzhen watches thread, hopefully it'll be easier to spot new ones.
So, I'm looking for a new Smart Watch, and decided to also check the apps. I didn't end up finding any real data on what works with whatand where to get them, so here we are. I started with just some notes, but I decided that maybe some other people could help and use it as well.
So if you happen to have a cheap chinese smartwatch, could you pop in to this list and add what watch you use with what app.
If you've tried a watch with some app and know it doesn't work, that would be swell too.
The idea here is to list compatibility for most, if not all, non-android wear smart watches and the apps floating around.
Hopefully, it will end up being useful so you can test the app before you buy your watch, or if you get fed up with the app it came with, see if there are alternatives.
Link in case the image doesn't work
Good evening - I'm a long time lurker at XDA and have gleaned a lot of useful information from this site, so thanks for that.
I have a client who is looking to build prototype for a device containing only one app, for a very young market, which will be the only app runnable on the device (think a smartwatch tamagotchi) - the priorities are that there's bluetooth, wifi and an accelerometer fully accessible to the app, and that the watch be relatively cheap. Now, while I've been a developer and sysadmin for a number of years, this is my first Android or wearable project, so I wanted to see if anyone had any useful tips on approaches to take, and devices to try for this prototype. (Also, I know the idea of locking down a device like this might be an anathema to people posting here. See this as an academic exercise in what's possible.)
As far as the approach goes, it seems to me I have a few options:
- Get a watch already running Android Wear, develop the app using Google's APIs and see if I can the modify the OS to boot into a single app.
- Get a (probably cheaper) watch which I can then flash with a ROM built by someone else, but will still allow me to access the accelerometer, then lock this down
- As above, but build my own ROM, containing only my app.
As far as devices go, we've had a look at some £20 Chinese wonders with MediaTek MT2502 chips, but I couldn't see how I'd get into them to flash a new ROM and I could't find anyone here using the same model. I've been looking at the MOTOACTV, which I see has many fans, but am also quite happy to consider other (particularly cheaper) alternatives, as long as I'll be able to develop something for them, get to the accelerometer and eventually send data to a server.
Sorry for the long post. Any advice?
A few days ago I purchased my Withings (by Nokia) Steel HR, which is one of these new cool-looking smartwatches, with continuous heart monitor and 25 days battery life.
However, it comes in a quite closed environment (virtually no settings anywhere) and only works with the Withings app, which is quite poorly integrated.
I'm easily thinking of a ton of features to be added directly or indirectly, which brings me to the wish to use it with other apps and to mod its software. (A first thing would be to be able to change the frequency at which heart readings are taken, and to be able to export raw data to my phone which are not available at the moment)
Any aspiring (or experienced) dev out there with this smartwatch?
By the way, mods aside I honestly think that this watch is full of potential and its software will receive many updates in the future, so be sure to check it out if you're looking to buy a smartwatch in the near future (This is not an ad, but it would be great to build up an xda community around this! )
I'm getting this watch as well. Let's hope it will have development potential
Hi,
I have this watch as well. I have been trying to sniff the BLE protocol, to send my hr to apps like Runtastic, without success.
A quick note worth mentioning: this watch shows you three types of notifications (plus alarms): sms, calendar, and phone calls. While you can't "fake" sms and phone calls, you can create as many calendar events as you want.
In other words, do you want to see weather updates on your watch? put together something like a Tasker task or an IFTTT recipe that automatically creates a google calendar event with the information you want displayed as the title, and you're done. Combine it with Tasker to ignore/remove the notification on your smartphone and voila', any-notifications on our withings steel hr
cheers