When my Galaxy Watch 4 is connected via both Bluetooth and wifi, periodically it will lose internet connectivity. I believe it's still connected to my phone for the purposes of notifications, but things like weather updates and accessing the Google Play Store on the watch fail with "Check your connection and try again" errors. Oddly enough, when I disable Bluetooth, forcing the watch to connect over wifi, these services start working again. While this solution does work, I then forget to turn Bluetooth back on, which probably isn't great if I leave an area with wifi.
Is this a known problem with a better workaround than "turn off Bluetooth"?
My watch does not have LTE, it is the wifi-only model. And to be clear, it connects fine over wifi, the problem is that if Bluetooth is also activated, it prefers Bluetooth over wifi, even when Bluetooth isn't connecting properly.
The watch is paired with the phone via BT. Turning off BT, the watch is no longer extension of your phone. I might have issue with the hardware if you confirmed your phone got good internet connection.
When both the watch and phone are connected via wifi to the internet, they can still communicate with each other: the Galaxy Wear app calls this "remotely connected." And again, the watch has a perfectly good connection when wifi is on but Bluetooth is off. It's only when they're both on that the connection fails. Perhaps there's an issue with the Bluetooth hardware on my device, but shouldn't the software work around that and use the working wifi when the Bluetooth fails? Isn't that exactly why these devices have both Bluetooth and wifi?
The watch uses WiFi when it's needed. If the BT is off, it might still connect via WiFi if both watch and phone on the same network. I think app developer uses debugging via WiFi so BT is off when debugging. Try checking BT with BT head phone. You can return the watch, and exchange for a new one.
One thing I should add: I'm upgrading from a Galaxy Watch Active, and never experienced problems like this: my Galaxy S10 phone connected to that watch without difficulty. So I don't think the problem is on the phone end.
I'm not sure what you're getting at with debugging. Something about apps always using Bluetooth if it's on, even if that doesn't work and wifi (which is also on) does work? I don't know enough about how networking is handled on the device, but if that's a per-app thing and not handled system-wide, seems like an odd design decision: individual apps shouldn't need to care about how they connect to the internet.
Ultimately it may turn out that I need to send back the watch, but I'd like to see if there's some other way around this problem.
Thank you for reaching out. I certainly can understand how frustrating it can be to lose internet. If you are using a Bluetooth connection it would prioritize that connectivity over the Wi-Fi. So if you are using Bluetooth and losing internet, I would recommend resetting the network settings on your phone. Just a heads up this will remove the saved Bluetooth and Wi-Fi network on your device.
It's different OS but Samsung trying to make look and feel the same as the old's. I upgrade GW4 from old GW. It's working flawlessly the same as my old GW.
