[Other SmartWatches] TheXenocide:
Yup, those are exactly the resources I've been getting started with (mostly reading for now). SWApp is now working relatively well for me. It took me a second to realize my watch had the developer option "Do not keep activities" checked, which was causing some issues, but I don't believe that's a default setting, I'm pretty sure I set that while tinkering with specific optimizations. This did, however, result in some crashes when moving between settings screens which I believe may have corrupted some settings. To fix, I simply force-stopped and cleared all data on both devices and then started the setup over.

I also noticed that when you set the watch to a Companion device, if you enable the clock lock screen during setup, when the setup says it will close the application to apply new settings it seems the auto-start lock automatically shows up if your screen turns off before re-launching the app, which appeared to not adjust to some of the settings until I force-stopped it and relaunched? I'm not sure this was the exact issue, but I might recommend not setting the app to use the clock lock until after initial setup is complete. Also, as a sidenote for those interested, the lock screen setting does not appear to be an actual lock screen launcher, but rather a FLAG_SHOW_WHEN_LOCKED activity that auto-starts (meaning the system lock screen is still running behind it and will sometimes show up). I have also noticed that sometimes the clock randomly shows up when just clicking back from some screens within SWApp, which is a sometimes jarring experience. I also had a very difficult time getting it to set my clock face, which it preview just fine, but I repeated the same steps several times before it finally popped up a message asking if I wanted to set my clock face. The digital faces are a little gaudy and have some aesthetic text like "waterproof" on it, which is not actually true of my device. That said, now that my clock face is set, it is much nicer than the stock clock.

Other behaviors in SWApp aren't as smooth as I would like, but are generally pretty good (some are the best out there). The Remote device location wasn't working as well as Google Device Manager does (I don't think SWApp can turn on the remote location either). The remote ring only turned my volume *on*, it didn't turn it up, so if you use the volume button on your phone to switch to vibrate by pushing down until it passes silent instead of using Volume Profiles (to skip straight to Vibrate or Silent) then the last non-silent/vibrate volume level of your phone will be used, which is 1 notch of volume. While testing the remote lock function I think SWApp may have disabled my already configured lock screen altogether, rather than forcing the device to lock (I was testing while the device was unlocked and the screen remained on). I have not tested any remote wipe features. My Bluetooth connection is intermittent, but that may be my phone's fault.

Several features don't work until the devices have had their "first sync" (notifications, missed calls, maybe some more), but it isn't entirely clear what causes the first sync to happen; I was tinkering for about 30 minutes before any of these features started working. Similarly, contact sync (for contact photos) requires an initial sync that pops up on the Master device (phone) but when I accidentally clicked the back button it was unclear how to get that opportunity again. After clearing data and resetting everything I didn't make the same mistake the second time, so everything worked fine after that.

Media controls did not work for Spotify on my phone, with either the normal or alternate settings, but again this may have been a result of the intermittent Bluetooth situation. It would be nice to have some indicator of when the devices are correctly synced, and which method is being used (I have enabled both Bluetooth and Internet; my watch does not have a SIM in it so I cannot test the text feature).

Because of this Bluetooth issue I have not enabled any leash features as I'm concerned that I may not be able to unlock my device under normal usage.

Remote battery works excellently from my watch, but sometimes my phone shows its own battery twice (not a concern for me; the watch showing phone battery is great though). Remote text works well, although I could not get speech-to-text working (at least I assume that's what the microphone means); I may be missing a pre-requisite? That's the only way I could imagine using my watch to text instead of my phone.

That's all for my initial experience with SWApp.

I find myself often wishing for a home button on this device; I'm wondering if there isn't something that can make a long press on the back button mean home and a long press on the power button to be an app manager (for closing/switching between apps)? That would be especially handy on this device. Also, the invisible menu button was handy to find, but there is also a button in the task bar that functions for menu, which is easier to understand; some way to disable the invisible back button would be especially great, and to do so for the menu button would work too I suppose. I also hoped to find gestures since they appear to be using the capacitive screen margins, but non exist that I could find (I had a device previously that had gestures on the off-screen capacitive "buttons" that was pretty nice).

I've actually been experimenting with this device to evaluate the hardware platform and determine the level of effort of modifying/creating software to facilitate a medical smart watch project some colleagues and I are working on. I would really like to get my hands on some ROM resources so I can tinker a little lower, but I'm reluctant to just start using S5 hacks without any confirmation of what works. It would be especially nice if there were some resources for making this a real Google Wear device since I don't intend to use the phone features (though the SIM is nice because I can see uses for data in my hopeful application of the technology).

I wouldn't mind knowing other developers more experienced with hacking ROMs to replace home screens, launchers, button configurations, etc. since I'm relatively new to lower level android development. I also wouldn't mind discussing the development of SWApp in further detail, since I see a strong intersection in some of our goals.