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I too have a very capable smartwatch (fitness watch - Garmin Fenix) and it's remarkable how different my experience with messages and actions are relative to th

I too have a very capable smartwatch (fitness watch - Garmin Fenix) and it's remarkable how different my experience with messages and actions are relative to the experience of Garmin users with Apple phones. Garmin Connect always runs in the background on my Android phone, watching for notifications, pulling data from and pushing data to Garmin servers on my behalf even when I'm not using the app. It's third-party, but it's reasonably well-written and doesn't nuke my phone battery or data plan - Android doesn't need to protect me or their reputation from Garmin. I can always check the weather or look at my daily workouts or whatever on my watch and trust that it's recently been upodated by the phone app phone. Garmin users with Apple phones complain that "Garmin doesn't work" after every iOS update that further hobbles the Garmin background service. I get text notifications on my watch for any Android apps that provide notifications, and relevant ones (like text messages, whether SMS or RCS) provide an option to reply from the watch. I tap the top right button on the watch and scroll to "OK" or "Thanks" or "Can't talk right now" or whatever one of a half dozen canned responses covers 90% of my needs in this mode, and don't have to dig my phone out of my backpack or otherwise interact. Emails, calendar appointments, clock stuff, music controls, etc. all work over the watch. It's just as privileged as the phone, I'm not concerned about my Garmin intruding on my privacy as protected by Android, I wear the watch 24/7 and it has more data on me than the phone!

lloeki 2y ago
> watching for notifications, pulling data from and pushing data to Garmin servers on my behalf even when I'm not using the app. It's third-party, but it's reasonably well-written and doesn't nuke my phone battery or data plan > get text notifications on my watch for any [...] apps that provide notifications, and relevant ones (like text messages, whether SMS or RCS [or iMessage]) I get this behaviour on iOS+Garmin, and can both see notification text (even when phone is locked and notification content hidden on lock screen) + can dismiss notifications just fine with "Clear" action (both points noted in the article as not being possible) Fair enough though, I just can't reply or take a specific action in actionable notifications. Media play pause next prev work as well, and calendars are all viewable too. Widgets that use the phone+app as proxy for network access also just work (e.g weather refreshes, or I have a Home Assistant widget which hits my self-hosted instance just fine) Apart from replying I don't have a hobbled experience at all.
- TheDong 2y ago
  The Garmin experience on iOS is noticeably inferior for me. On android, you can turn off forwarding notifications to the watch on a per-app basis, so for example I can have youtube put notifications into the android notification center, but not the watch. On iOS, you can't configure which apps forward notifications to a garmin watch. You only get all or nothing. Apple watch can do this just fine. Is that not an issue for you? Do you not feel hobbled by that?
  - lloeki 2y ago
    I can understand someone would want that level of granularity. Personally if I don't want it on my watch I also don't want it on my phone, so I simply disable all notifications at the app level. That said, I seem to remember the trick on iOS is to remove one of the notification alert types (can't recall if it's "lock screen" or "notification centre" or "banner") and then it shows up on the phone but not the watch.

lloeki 2y ago

> watching for notifications, pulling data from and pushing data to Garmin servers on my behalf even when I'm not using the app. It's third-party, but it's reasonably well-written and doesn't nuke my phone battery or data plan > get text notifications on my watch for any [...] apps that provide notifications, and relevant ones (like text messages, whether SMS or RCS [or iMessage]) I get this behaviour on iOS+Garmin, and can both see notification text (even when phone is locked and notification content hidden on lock screen) + can dismiss notifications just fine with "Clear" action (both points noted in the article as not being possible) Fair enough though, I just can't reply or take a specific action in actionable notifications. Media play pause next prev work as well, and calendars are all viewable too. Widgets that use the phone+app as proxy for network access also just work (e.g weather refreshes, or I have a Home Assistant widget which hits my self-hosted instance just fine) Apart from replying I don't have a hobbled experience at all.

TheDong 2y ago
The Garmin experience on iOS is noticeably inferior for me. On android, you can turn off forwarding notifications to the watch on a per-app basis, so for example I can have youtube put notifications into the android notification center, but not the watch. On iOS, you can't configure which apps forward notifications to a garmin watch. You only get all or nothing. Apple watch can do this just fine. Is that not an issue for you? Do you not feel hobbled by that?
- lloeki 2y ago
  I can understand someone would want that level of granularity. Personally if I don't want it on my watch I also don't want it on my phone, so I simply disable all notifications at the app level. That said, I seem to remember the trick on iOS is to remove one of the notification alert types (can't recall if it's "lock screen" or "notification centre" or "banner") and then it shows up on the phone but not the watch.