Gear S3 seems to pair better with iPhone than with Galaxy

[Miwenskee]

Hi all!

So I recently bought a Gear S3 Classic to go with my Galaxy S7 that I have been using with absolute delight for the past year. I had a simple motive for this purchase - to be able to control my music player, calls and messages on the go without the need to take out my phone out of my pocket (in case of cold weather, when I'm biking, etc.) For the most part, it does the job as expected... with the exception of the call taking. Normal calls get registered fine - someone calls, my watch lights up and gives me the option to answer, easy-peasy. The problem is when I start taking calls from third party apps like Viber and Facebook Messenger. Here is what happens with these instead - message notifications work with the watch absolutely fine, but when I receive a call on either of those, the watch doesn't register that call at all, it acts as if nothing is happening. Only after the person hangs up does my watch show a notification of a missed call and, get this, the option to call back. Really peculiar.

I tried several things in an attempt to fix this - I enabled all permissions for the respective apps, I restored the watch to factory settings and paired it with the phone again, and I updated both the Samsung Gear app and the OS itself - from Marshmallow to Nougat. None of these seem to help.

Now, normally I would rule this out as an issue with the apps themselves rather than any of the two Samsung products... But this is where things get really strange. I decided to download Gear S on my old iPhone 5s and pair my watch with it to see if these aforementioned issues can be seen there as well. To my amazement, there were none! The iPhone seemed to not only push notifications to the watch without a hitch, but did so when it came to calls as well. Stardard phone call alerts were pushed as well as Viber and Messenger call alerts. After doing this test, I paired the watch back to my Galaxy S7 and the issues returned.

Can anyone give me any kind of pointers as to why this seems to be the case? As someone who bought this watch for the specific purpose to manage calls on the go (rather than all the nifty Health features which, even though I welcome, were not really a part of my incentive to make the purchase), this issue is really making me feel like I'm not getting the type of conveniences I paid for.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance!

Miwenskee

[AntS]

Hi Miwenskee. :smileyhappy:

Hmmm. Headscratcher that one. 

Apps aren't always the same across all OS's though. Just to confirm, on your S7 are your third-party apps like Facebook Messenger and Viber the latest versions? 

[Miwenskee]

Good evening AntS :smileyhappy:

Yes, I double-checked to make sure and can confirm that I have the latest versions of the apps I tested.

[Miwenskee]

bump 😕

[Bades1978]

Ok sounds like a real grey matter stretcher to me, I would say we need to  do some test and see's on it now for me the 1st thing that comes to mind is trying to rule out 50% of the problem, do you have or know someone else with a Samsung S6/7 you could attempt to try to connect to? (see if it happens there if it does not we know to start with the phone). If not my gut feelings are that it could be possible that it's down to a power mode such as battery saving so try sticking the phone in performance mode and try that (also check none are on in the watch after you try that) Let me know how it goes and if there is any change.

[Miwenskee]

Hi Bades,

First off, apologies for the late reply, I didn't really expect anyone to write anything here even after the bump. So thanks a lot for showing interest in my issue!

I can confirm that even with the phone set to High Performance and the watch without any power saving features turned on, the problem is still there.

As for a trying a different Galaxy phone, I will have access to another Galaxy S7 in about 2 weeks from writing this and will be able to test the watch on it. Will update when I do.

[Miwenskee]

UPDATE: I can now confirm that I have tried pairing the watch with another Galaxy S7 and the result is absolutely the same as when I have the watch paired with my personal phone - no call notifications are pushed to the watch from the aforementioned third-party apps.

[DRUIDDOODE513]

Don't be offended by this as you may have already done it 

Even wiping your phones cache partition can help.

Hope you get it sorted 

I have a gear fit 2 and saw a s3 working for the first time and it looks like an amazing add on for the s7 s8 or whatever