Fitbit solved a big annoyance with wearables; why won’t Google or Apple follow?

The bane of my existence as a techie is switching my major telephone. I’ve to put aside a whole day to get issues carried out correctly since I all the time do a clear set up — no backups or restores. I would not wish to carry over any residual bug or situation from one system to a different and thus unfairly choose the brand new telephone.

Between putting in apps, logging in and establishing preferences, transferring WhatsApp, ensuring my Bluetooth headset and buds are paired, configuring any sensible residence gadget that requires geolocation or native management, and extra, there’s a lot to do… till I hit one ultimate roadblock: my wearables.

There, Fitbit does issues proper. It permits me to pair my exercise tracker or watch to a new telephone in a couple of minutes. Samsung, Google (and all Wear OS watches), and Apple do not. They require me to wipe my smartwatch earlier than pairing it with a new telephone. Why?

This is how issues go with Fitbit. On my new telephone, I open the Fitbit app and log into my account. My knowledge is instantly seen there and my band — now an outdated and overwhelmed Inspire HR — exhibits up however just isn’t paired. I faucet its title and allow the Nearby permission to let the app scan Bluetooth gadgets. It finds my Fitbit, asks me to pair it, and after a couple of faucets, it is all carried out. The six screenshots above present your entire circulation, which takes 5 minutes. At most.

My Inspire HR is now synced to my new telephone and the entire settings and knowledge have been carried by way of as a result of nothing has modified on the tracker itself. I need not again up, reset, restore, or take some other additional steps. It’s a quasi-seamless transition and it really works the identical manner for any Fitbit exercise tracker or smartwatch I’ve used.

As far as I can inform, Garmin handles issues comparatively much like Fitbit save for one additional step; you simply should unpair your band or watch from the outdated telephone first earlier than pairing it to the brand new one, however you need not reset it.

With the Apple Watch or the newest Samsung Galaxy Watch fashions, this identical transition is far more tedious. I’ve to enter the watch’s app on my outdated telephone and again up my knowledge. Then I seize the watch, reset it, and infrequently must undergo setup as if this was a model new smartwatch. After that, I can pair the watch with my new telephone, undergo all of the menus there as properly, and when issues are lastly settled, I can select to revive my backup.

All in all, I’ve to put aside anyplace between ten minutes and an hour to do that. One YouTuber mentioned the principle step of the restoring course of took 56 minutes on his Apple Watch. And as I’m penning this, I’m going by way of it on my Galaxy Watch 4. It’s been caught at 33% of the watch face restore step for ten minutes and counting (see picture above); how lengthy it will keep there may be anybody’s guess. If it would not work, I’ll should reset the watch a second time and take a look at once more.

The complete course of is unnecessarily convoluted, time-consuming, and doubtlessly buggy. It feels just like the late ’90s or early ’00s when any Bluetooth gadget needed to be reset earlier than being paired to a new system. We’re 20 years previous that now.

And let’s not even point out different Wear OS watches. Google would not embody a backup/restore course of by default in its platform, so watchmakers should do it themselves. And many clearly do not. Which has pressured me to arrange all the things — watch faces, apps, shortcuts, settings — from scratch on lots of my watches over the previous few years. (I do know there’s an ADB workaround to pair with out resetting, nevertheless it usually results in points down the road.)

We have so many questions on the upcoming Google Pixel Watch, and that is considered one of them: How will Google’s new smartwatch deal with the transition between telephones? Will Google borrow Fitbit’s seamless strategy? After all, it owns Fitbit now, in order that would not be a lot of a stretch. Or will it stick with its tried-and-true “just set it up from scratch” strategy? Again, it is Google we’re speaking about, and the corporate took a decade to (almost) grasp the artwork of backups and restores on Android telephones. It would possibly as properly take one other decade to do it proper for different product classes.

I suppose I’m additionally inquisitive about the way forward for Google’s ecosystem. We know that producers must construct their very own apps for Wear OS 3.0 watches as a result of the replace just isn’t suitable with the prevailing one-size-fits-all Wear OS app. So some makers would possibly determine to implement a quick and easy transition to new telephones whereas others do not. Only time will inform.