scanwatch Bluetooth connectivity problems

ScanWatch

September 08, 2020 08:13
Edited

Written by Claus R

33 comments

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Hi,
does anyone of you experience the same problems with android10 and bluetooth LE?
e.g.
- selecting a workout on the watch, then i get the error message 'open health mate on your phone for gps'.
- Ending a workout session on the watch, finishing properly. Then, some time later, open the phone healthmate app and ... the app is still thinking it is recording a workout session. This disappears automatically after some time (when the watch reconnects, i think) but is still annoying.
- general bluetooth problems: the scanwatch disconnects very often, and i cannot receive any notifications on the watch. Easy test: leave your phone alone for 15min, then send a telegram message. No notification on the watch.
The message is displayed on the phone as popup message, led is blinking, but... no notification on scanwatch. If you wait (watch reconnects) and send another message, it is sent to the watch.
This behavior is very bad, i won't switch on my phone any now and then only to 'wake up' the connection between phone and watch???? The healthmate background process should do this for me automatically
(just to be sure: i made a reset of all wifi/bluetooth connections on the phone, made a factory reset on the watch, reconnected/paired scanwatch again with healthmate. But, this did not help)

I was using steelHR sport for a reference test:
All is working as expected, i don't have to wake up my phone to get notifications on my steel hr sport watch. This is how it should be, scanwatch is the problem obviously, not healthmate 5.1, not android 10...

The phone tells me 'connected to your steel hr sport'. (in contrast to scanwatch, where it always says something like 'looking for your watch' or 'connecting to your watch'.)

So, bluetooth connection is not stable with scanwatch (being on firmware 1471, it wasn't either with 1312 before...)

Your experiences?

My support ticket wasn't answered at all, instead, it was silently closed (i reopened it, though). Not what you would expect from a support-channel, wouldn't you?

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Comments

michael.dietschi.75

December 26, 2021 13:42

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I am so disappointed by Withings.

My wife is wearing a Steel HR for 2 years and collected lots of scratches during this period. I thought this years Christmas is a great opportunity to give her an upgrade to a new Scanwatch which is advertised as being equipped with a saphire glass.

Sadly we experienced very similar BLE (not-so-)reconnection issue as the OP. It's easily reproducible - the phone (LG V30) is always reconnecting to the Steel HR but not to the new Scanwatch ...unless the display get's turned on and and the unlock pattern gets displayed - no need to even unlock the phone.

Of course I tried also with a different phone (LG V40) and unbonded the Steel HR which did not make a difference. So, the same phone with the very same Health Mate app always successfully reconnects to a Steel HR but not to the newly bought Scanwatch.

In my research I stumbled upon this thread here and the non-response my Withings on this issue just adds on top of the current frustration because this leads to the impression that there will most likely never be a fix for this.

I tried using workarounds with "Tasker for Android" until I decided that this is a too nerdy burden for my wife's phone and gave up. Will sadly send back the Scanwatch tomorrow...
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rdavis9671

December 30, 2021 16:57

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I had the same problem with my Scanwatch not reconnecting to bluetooth after leaving range of my phone. When I installed the app, I acknowledged when it prompted me to turn on location services, which I did. However, I have found that it only turns on location services while using the app.

On my Motorola Moto G, Android 11, I had to go into 'Settings>Location>App access to location'. Verify Health Mate app is "Allowed all the time" and not "Allowed only while in use".

Hope this helps someone in the future, it worked for me.
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fabian.ahrens

January 10, 2022 13:32

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I got my ScanWatch some days ago and was quickly disillusioned about it because I experienced the same bluetooth and notification problems. Also getting the newest update (version 2291) that is supposed to fix this issue did not change anything. I'm starting to wonder whether ScanWatch does not correctly work with my Huawei Mate 20 lite that uses EMUI version 10.0.0.13.

Anyone else still experiencing similar problems with their Huawei phone?
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