Galaxy Watch - screen wake up/turn off behaviour is irritating

[ConcreteLlama]

I got my Galaxy Watch on Friday and for the most part I love it. However, a couple of things really bug me about a) the consistency of the wake up gesture and b) its tendency to turn the screen off much more quickly than it should.

So for a) - sometimes I just find that the wake up gesture doesn't work at all and I have to put my arm down and then back up again until it works. This feature is one of the most fundamental aspects of a smart watch that needs to work. It is especially noticable if I'm lying down but occasionally causes issues when sitting or standing. I think it's something your engineers really need to look at as, after a quick Google, I've seen many people complain about it on the Gear S3. I hope this is looked into as the fact it was an issue back then but still hasn't been fixed is a bit of a bad sign to me...

For b) I have 2 main issues. 1 is that the screen timeout setting only applies if the watch was woken up by the buttons and not by the wake up gesture. I think it's fine to have a different screen timeout if it was woken by gesture, but it should really be a configurable option.

The other annoyance is that the screen turns off when you tilt the watch back down. I think this is OK if you've woken the watch up with a gesture but it should be possible to disable this if the watch has been woken up by buttons or the dial. 

[requiem3]

Totally agree with both these criticisms. Feel the exact same way. Samsung please fix this and let us control the behavior. 

[Jane-0]

I bought my watch not even a week ago and the wake up gesture does not work. I can put my arm down and bring it back up and the watch face is black.

[d4005]

Samsung really need to learn that if you have some important logic in the code that does something significant on a detected action, then that should be configurable. Even if you have to dig into some deeply hidden screen to control that, at least it's there and for those of us (everyone in this thread) that want to control that, we can.

I've posted half a dozen questions in this forum that remain unanswered too. Here's why I'm not recommending this smartwatch anymore:

1. Always on isn't always on. It's only half on, which doesn't satisfy the term "always on". Call it "half awake" and implement a real always on.

2. Gesture doesn't wake it up as effectively as a button-press wake up (it's only a brief wake-up).

3. Often a gesture-driven wake-up shows you a "No Notifications" screen instead of your watchface. I've had to disable gestures (and use always-on) as I'm sick of wanting to see something on my watchface (the time, date, steps, heart bpm, battery %, etc) but instead I'm being told I have no notifications and here's how I can get some (I already have 22 apps enabled for notifications and get 20+ of them a day).

4. We need Samsung to have at least integrated the top 10 mobile apps in a more useful way. I'm talking Whatsapp here. I can get a notification and respond to it, but that's all. I can't initiate. I can't view past chat history. #VeryPoor

5. Voice-memo notifications disappear from your phone without interaction with the phone, thus rendering the whole idea of a voice-memo (to remind you later you have something you wanted to memo yourself about) useless. I'll often do a voice memo  of "remember to do this or that" and I see the memo get transferred to my phone and the notification appear on it, but later it's gone. I've actually had my phone (S8) next to me with a notification on it and saw it simply disappear without interaction. Also, if it's not gone, pressing on it makes it go away (instead of taking you to your folder of voice memo files). It's as if nobody at Samsung ever even tried using it once. #QaFail. I gave up on voice-memo on my watch and instead use my phone like I used to and send a whatsapp voice memo to a whatsapp group that I'm the only member of.

Oh, and 6 ... if Samsung are monitoring this forum then there shouldn't be posts with zero replies that have been there more than a couple of working days.

[MR55]

I thought there would be a way to keep it on ALL the time as well! I'm very close to returning my GW because of that one issue. I set it for the max, 5 minutes, but that's a waste of time. Doesn't work either. Don't know what the developers were thinking. I charge my GW every night regardless so I would like the opportunity to leave the main watch face ON. PLEASE CHANGE THAT SOON. THANK YOU!

[MR55]

DITTO!!

[MilitaryCadets]

Just got it today and have to say dissapoindis. Gesture does not work no always on everything last people posted is right . I want my watch face on atlsast for 5 mins or all the time . And Samsung don't reply to there posters either . I will be telling everyone znot to bother getting galaxy watch 

[FalconBlizZACK]

TURN OFF THE WAKE UP GESTURE

I find this helped with keeping the screen on to the time I set in the settings by waking up the watch by the bezel. Solves it for me.

[Hellraiser6662]

Yep ive just noticed that and its a pain it never works right, it makes it turn off so quick, the simple answer to this i found is turn it off and rely on the time out plus you get to see the watch face more offen then a blank screen, and why you cant double tap the screen to wake the watch up i dont know. Moving the bezzle or pressing buttons is pants. 

[Hellraiser6662]

All these great watch faces that you cant see for more than a few minutes, i dont care for battery life the watch should beable to tell its getting low and turn it self to power saving mode to save the battery.

[Rich_kb]

Just received my Galaxy watch today. Opened the package and set it all up. Nice....

When you turn your wrist it supposed to come on right? Always on is supposed to be always on right? Found this post and immediately my heart sank... I have to push a button for it to light up? Really?   Faaaaah    Maybe I'll return it..  this is dissapoiting.

Come on Samsung you can do better than this. Can't you push out a simple software update to fix these complaints and make your product better?