[Other SmartWatches] masterjc13:
Hope this review of BlueWatcher is objective! Written from the heart... Let's begin... and SORRY FOR MY ENGLISH!

Casio, known for its extensive collection of watches including electronic components, decided in 2012 to introduce Bluetooth Low Energy technology in some of its G-Shock watch models. It was not only a proof of concept, the variety of Casio Bluetooth models was growing over the years. Now you can buy the following Casio models with Bluetooth technology: Casio G-Shock GB-5600, Casio G-Shock GB-6900, Casio SPORTS STB-1000, Casio G-Shock GBA-400. The GBA-400 is the latest model of the G-Shock Bluetooth family and promises to have on your wrist a remote control for your music player.

A watch with Bluetooth technology is nothing if you don't have the associated mobile application that performs communications and implement all that functionality that makes our watch a real smartwatch. Therefore, Casio accompanies its Bluetooth watches with its official application called G-Shock+ ( Available for iOS and Android) . In recent years, Casio offered very limited functionality for notifications and phone control. Have been multiple the alavanzas Casio received but has also received many criticisms of reduced functionality offered in its G-Shock+ application. Users are requesting that Casio explodes the true potential Casio watches to become a real smartwatch.

Given this expectation of users to include functionality in G-Shock+ app that seemed mandatory, appeared the Android application called BlueWatcher. Detailed information about the application: http://www.bluewatcher.es

BlueWatcher is the unofficial app and the alternative to control Casio watches with Bluetooth technology. BlueWatcher stems from the concern of how a tough watch, with approximate battery life of two years , world leader in design ... was not able to exploit the true potential as a "smart watch" . Casio remains halfway so BlueWatcher intended to help us go the whole way.

To summarize, What does Official Casio G-Shock+ application do?

Receive notifications of an incoming call.

Receive notifications of our mails entering data connection IMAP / POP and your username and password.

Receive notification with the message "TWITTER" or "FACEBOOK" when we receive notification of these two applications. We will also have to enter username and password in the application.

Receive notification when we have a new Calendar event on our phone.

Control the music player of your phone from our watch.

Find your phone by pressing a button on our clock (if it is connected ) .

Adjust all configurable parameters of our clock from the phone (alarms, alerts , world time ... )

We have to announce bad news as the latest model GBA-400 completely ELIMINATES all notification features. The only remaining features are configuring our watch settings and controlling the phone music player.

The list of functionality that G-Shock+ offers is wide but for those looking to have TOTAL control of your phone on your wrist, is clearly insufficient.

Here is a list of typical questions and answers an advanced user could have looking for a perfect smart watch. Those are the answers using G-Shock+ application:

- Can I connect my Casio watch to any phone model? NO! Casio only supports Samsung S3 , S4 and Note3 models.

- Can I receive notifications in my Casio G-Shock GBA-400 model? NO! Casio removed all notification functions.

- Am I notified when I receive a message from my favorite messaging application: Whatsapp , Line, Viber ? NO!

- Am I notified when I receive an event from my favorite game? NO!

- Can I see the sender of my Facebook notifications? NO, just prints out "FACEBOOK"

- Can I see my phone battery level in my watch screen? NO

- What is the maximum number of actions that I can setup on my phone using my watch buttons? Many actions as buttons have your watch but only for music control.

- Can I use the STB-1000 on my Android phone? NO

As mentioned above, BlueWatcher is the alternative to the official Casio G-Shock+ app but should be taken as the app that fills the holes left by Casio. One of the most important aspects for the BlueWatcher's development team was to provide an application with the minimum functionality to convert these watches in "smart watches" . That's why BlueWatcher includes functionality that already includes the official G-Shock+ app but including all that functionality not offered by Casio. Let's look over the most important aspects of BlueWatcher.

The first most discussed aspect on the Casio G-Shock+ application is the set of supported phones. Casio only supports Samsung S3, S4 and Note 3. BlueWatcher announces that includes no restriction to download and test the application. You can verify that BlueWatcher works with other different models phone models like Sony, HTC, etc. But BlueWatcher assumes that it can't solve the problem totally as they accept there are some phone models that do not run neither. Currently BlueWatcher announces that you can have problems with Android Lollipop (known problem in Android 5.0 with Bluetooth Low Energy devices) or users with Samsung Galaxy Note 4/Sony Xperia Z1 among other models.

Connectivity, this is one of the most traumatic points for BlueWatcher. By extending the range of supported phones, the connection process can become tedious due to the instability of the Casio Bluetooth modules. That's why BlueWatcher announced that users can freely buy and test the application and if that does not work, apply for refund of money if they can not get connected.

Another aspect that we can find too in the official application is the ability to notify a new incoming call in the watch screen showing the contact name.

Without doubt, BlueWatcher tries to overcome the biggest problem with Casio G-Shock+ app: The ability to be notified about all the events that occur in our phone. In BlueWatcher, for example, we can set up an advanced algorithm to notify us when we have a new message from the WhatsApp messaging application. We can receive all messages, receive messages every certain period of time or receive new messages only when we have read the above message for a specific contact.

But BlueWatcher is more than Whatsapp notifications! It provides the option to receive notifications from any application that is installed in your phone. It is as simple as adding a "Custom Notifications" app from all the applications we have installed, select those we want to be notified, personalize the message we receive and mission accomplished. From that moment we can receive notifications from our favorite applications. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Candy Crash Saga... there are no limits to what we receive on our watch.

The owners of a GBA-400 watch are in luck because, as mentioned, Casio decided to completely eliminate any notifications for this model. BlueWatcher includes support for full notifications in the GBA-400 model. The pity is that Casio also removed the vibrator from the watch so for now you can view the contents of the notification.

As the official application, another service that also was considered essential is "phone finder service". BlueWatcher includes this service that once connected the phone to the watch, we can use our watch to make our phone sound. And we will have already found it!

At this point, it is time to see which is the second important feature that differentiates BlueWatcher from G-Shock+: Multiple phone control modes. As we have seen, the official G-Shock+ application supports control the music volume, pause, play and skip tracks. BlueWatcher tries to go much further including a larger set of possible commands to be executed each time the button on our watch is pressed. Currently, the interaction between watch and phone is higher and we can find commands such as displaying the phone battery level in our watch, deleting GBA-400 screen text when we have already read all notifications and controlling the music player. BlueWatcher has in its roadmap include control of the camera from the watch as well as a wide range of functions.

Since the number of commands that can be executed with each of the watch's buttons grows, it is imperative to configure which command will execute each one. BlueWatcher goes further again and allows you to configure multiple phone control modes. This allows you to map multiple configurations for each watch button allowing you to switch between modes from the watch itself. To better understand this operation, consider the following example we tested in a Casio G-Shock GB-X6900B model (with three configurable buttons):

MODE 1: Music

Button A: Toggle play/pause music

Button B: Next song

Button C: Next phone control mode

MODE 2: Volume

Button A: Raise music volume

Button B: Lower music volume

Button C: Next phone control mode

MODE 2: Other

Button A: Show phone battery level as a notification

Button B: Next phone control mode

From a watch with three functional buttons we configured five effective commands. When BlueWatcher include more new commands, the ability of configuring multiple control modes will make more sense.

We would not want to ignore that BlueWatcher , as the official G-Shock+ application, is able to synchronize the watch date/time on each connection. In this way, we will always have synchronized our watch and phone.

But there is one funcion we miss in BlueWatcher, it does not include the ability to configure all functions of the watch from your phone. So to set alarms, alert configuration, control time aligned , etc we have to connect G-Shock+ app or configure it from the watch itself using complex configuration modes offered by the watch.

Before closing, we emphasize the technical support of BlueWatcher since in all cases we have contacted them we have received a reply in less than 24h. They promise to refund you the money in case you can not connect the watch to your phone. Good to know we are not alone when using BlueWatcher for the first time!

In short, this is the application that will allow many users decide to buy a Casio watch with Bluetooth technology because using BlueWatcher they will own a really smart watch reaching a wider ecosystem of users than the ecosystem proposed by Casio and its official G-Shock+ application.

Here we have a summary of the advantages and disadvantages:

Pros

Compatible with a wide range of phone models

Notifications for ALL applications you have installed

Notifications for Casio G-Shock GBA-400 are enabled

Android Support for Casio STB-1000

Advanced commands to control your phone like sending your phone's battery to your wrist

Multiple phone control modes to extend control functions

Excellent customer support. Response within 24 hours with money-back option if inoperative.

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Cons

Difficult pairing process between watch and phone

There are still some phone models that are incompatible. Android 5.0 problems with Bluetooth Low Energy

Simple graphical interface

The ability to configure the watch settings is completely lost

OFFICIAL BLUEWATCHER WEB: http://www.bluewatcher.es

OFFICIAL BLUEWATCHER APP: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bluewatcher

OFFICIAL G-Shock+ APP: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.casio.gshockplus