As most of you know the Google pixel 10 was released today with Android 16 With QPR 1 and I just wanted to let everyone know that as it is right now The Galaxy watch 8 Does NOT work with Pixel 10 and Android 16 at all.
I tried to speak with Official support chat today and that was 100% a complete waste of time. the support rep was just reading me Auto replies on how to pair devices with bluetooth.
I hope someone at Samsung will see this and please forward this to someone that can get the Dev's to take a look at what's going on
Not sure if it's just dumb luck or what but had my watch 8 off for the last few days. Was playing music through a Bluetooth speaker and was able to get my watch to pair properly. Haven't noticed crazy battery drain but it's only been about 5 hours.
Was an update for the watch also after I was able to get it paired.
Not claiming this is the silver bullet, but it worked for me. Going on day 2 ... the watch remains connected and battery life seems normal if not better.
After noticing the "Connectivity Services" services update in Google Play, I installed the update and started from scratch with my Watch 8 Classic and the Wear app. The watch had had a factory reset performed on it. I forced stopped the Wear app, and flushed the cache and data.
When I attempted to pair the watch, it failed, just like it had many times before. I tried to pair it directly via Bluetooth and it appeared to work, only to fail after getting through about 80% of the process. The watch was showing up as paired in the app, but the app was unresponsive when I selected it. The watch kept continuing trying to pair, but the pairing codes did not match. While I was researching the problem, the watch rebooted on its own. After the reboot I attempted to pair it again and it worked, flawlessly. Haven't had any issues since.
I can't explain why it worked, but I am guessing the update had something to do with it. Hopefully, you can luck up and get it to work, too.
Ok, Inspired by the post above(which didn't work for me) I tried a couple things that seems to have stuck for me and is different from anything I tried in these forums previously. Initially I could only get the watch to stay connected temporarily by transfer from my pixel 9 XL to the p10xl, and I think transferring the watch and all phone apps from the P9 may be the problem we are having. So here is what I did.
- all software is up to date, watch and phone.
1. Factory reset the watch from my previous phone and signed out of Samsung apps on the p9. I also turned off Bluetooth on the p9.
2. While watch was resetting, I also force stopped the galaxy wearable app, smart switch, and Samsung health on the p10xl and cleared data and cache for these apps. (I believe this is the important step).
3. When the watch rebooted from the reset, Galaxy wearable app auto launched and began trying to pair and connect. The whole process continued flawlessly, including signing into your Google account, which I never had it do on the P10xl previously.
The only odd thing is there was no back up that was found in the galaxy wearable app after the watch was connected,so I had to go all back through settings and watch faces. I have also rebooted both phone and watch and they communicate properly, notifications come through, and battery drain gone.
If anything changes I will update here. I hope this helps!
The P10 issue has not been resolved as of now. While there are different opinions, no one knows if this is a Google or a Samsung problem (or a combination of both). Here is a side topic to consider while we wait.
Samsung watches have a very poor backup process, we need a better backup solution for unusual situations like this one.
Problem 1: Backup is handled by Samsung's Smart Switch. Up until roughly 12-18 months ago you could initiate a backup when you decided to, like just before a transfer of the watch to a new phone (or to a new watch). That option was removed and backup is handled automatically when certain criteria are met. Samsung should return the option to do a backup manually in addition to the automatic process.
Problem 2: A much more troubling problem is that there is no way to save a known good backup, at least I haven't found one. I'd like to save known good backups to an external drive and in a good backup procedure have rotating grandfathered backups. During the current debacle I tried to go to a Pixel 10 Pro XL and like many it failed. I discovered I could go back to a Pixel 9 and that went well including restoring from a Smart Switch backup. Then I unsuccessfully tried one of the recommended fixes but it didn't work for me. I then again restored to the P9 but found that the backup was no longer a true backup from the first time around, it was basically useless to me. Nobody likes factory resets but sometimes they are needed. A good backup saved to an external drive could help a lot. Samsung should allow saving backups to an external drive.
i tried al the solutions.... playing music, making a phone call, reset all network connections... fo me, nothing works!! Als had a chat with google today
