Latest Samsung Galaxy Watch4 update inadvertently breaks the single most important feature for some
The SamsungGalaxy Watch4andGalaxy Watch4 Classicare some of the best smartwatches you may buy right now.The tech giant started rolling out a new system updateto both devices recently, introducing a slew of health and wellness features. Unfortunately, it looks like some older watch faces are no longer working correctly after the upgrade.
Redditor u/malbry noted the issue on the platformafter noticing their favorite hand-coded watch face of several years seemingly stopped working. According to the user, when in ambient mode with always-on display enabled, the watch face does not correctly update the time unless the screen is touched, and the issue only arose on their Samsung Galaxy Watch4 after installing the new system update.
The leading theory is that the onTimeTick() API is not being called while in ambient mode. This service is responsible for updating the time shown by watch faces — it’s usually called upon at least once a minute in ambient and interactive modes, when the date or time changes, or when the timezone updates. For watch faces that use the WatchFaceService.Engine class, the onTimeTick() subclass is necessary for the watch to display the correct time, even without the user interacting with it recently.
That said, this is not a major issue since most recent watch faces don’t utilize WatchFaceService.Engine. However, if you have older watch faces that require the API, you might notice the strange behavior after installing the new update.
Aside from the minor ambient watch face problem, Samsung’s new wearable update provides a sleep coaching feature that should improve the quality of your rest after analyzing your sleep habits over one week, gives “deeper insights” to help you stay on track and reach your health goals faster, and lets runners and cyclists set and track custom goals for interval training. One thing it doesn’t bring, though, is support for the most coveted assistant (that is not Bixby), but Google has clarified that its Assistantwill be available for downloadon Galaxy Watch4 devices soon via the Play Store.
Thanks:Malcolm
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