tl;dr: My Vivoactive 4S does not work with my phone, and I'm considering buying a phone that will work with my watch. (Excessive details at bottom of post.)
As I see it, my options are to:
- have someone point out something I've missed;
- give up on Garmin;
- buy a new phone
(I can't use my husband's phone which does work with Garmin - it's physically too big). I am of two minds as to whether buying a new phone would be throwing good money after bad (I would be buying a phone for the watch; this is not ideal as the watch itself was an expensive investment where the price tag caused me to spend a few months umming and ahhing over whether to purchase). (I have my eye on the Pixel 4a as that feels like a nice size.)
If I buy a new phone, I want to know that it works with Garmin.
Garmin does not provide a list of working phones. (I elaborate on this below)
So... what phones does Garmin work with?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Debugging steps I have taken:
- reset my watch to factory settings, and tried pairing both before and after updating its software using the Garmin software on my computer
- forgot all Bluetooth connections on my phone, and deleted the Bluetooth cache
- deleted and reinstalled the Garmin App
- restarted my phone and restarted my watch
I have tried the above steps in different combinations of orderings.
I have done my best to systematically go through most of the debugging resources both Garmin and users have made available. I screenshot my phone and took photos of the state of my watch while stepping through the debugging process, and would be happy to upload if requested. I believe I have been reasonably thorough, but I would be incredibly relieved to have something silly I have missed by pointed out to me.
The only thing I have not done is hard reset my phone - I am reluctant to do this as it would take at least an hour to record all my settings and data, and then restore after the hard reset. I am also of the opinion that if I am going to need to debug regularly and each time my phone will require a hard reset, I am not interested in using Garmin.
My phone / my husband's phone details:
- Garmin's stated requirements:
- https://support.garmin.com/en-AU/?faq=NA3eQPghZj1CsjYq0PPeX5
- Bluetooth 4.0 or higher
- 6.0 OS or higher
- my phone (does not work):
- Alcatel (subsidiary of Nokia); Model 1S
- Bluetooth 4.2
- Android 9.0 (updated to 9-01004)
- my husband's phone (works)
- Realme C3
- Android 10
- Bluetooth 5.0
Details of my watch / phone history:
- I bought a Vivoactive 4S in June of 2020
- at the time I was pregnant and throwing up at the drop of a hat; I couldn't get the phone and watch to pair and assumed user error due to, well, throwing up at the drop of a hat; so I put the watch in a drawer to deal with at a later date
- in February I managed to get my watch and phone to (reasonably reliably) talk to one another; however, after about a week one of them ran out of battery (I can't recall which I had failed to charge) and once I had charged and turned it on, the pairing failed and continued to fail
- side note - I have a hazy memory of finding some blog that told me to try this one thing I hadn't yet tried (I think it was deleting a file on either my watch or the phone) and that seemed to make it magically work
- qualification of side note - I had a newborn; so my memories of that time are unreliable (to put it kindly)
- in late March I decided to use my watch without the bluetooth functionality, and have used it (uploading data using a laptop) in this manner since
- two weeks ago I decided to get the [blank] thing to finally [blank] work; after a day of debugging I admitted defeat and tried to get it to pair with my husband's phone - it paired perfectly
- after a few days of being paired to my husband's phone, there was an update that caused my watch to freeze in the middle of a run (apparently many people were affected by this)
- I contacted Garmin (finally) and asked for assistance; their response:
- by phone: we will send you a list of tasks you need to do to try to debug it before we will help you (would not listen to my list that I had methodically documented; never sent me the email)
- by email: sent email that I should try turning it on and off again
- by phone: told me that as it was outside of warranty (not strictly true by Australia's consumer protection laws), they would exchange my current watch for a refurbished watch; when I pointed out that as my watch works with my husband's phone, and thus it was likely as not that a refurbished watch would face the same problems and I wanted some assurance that a refurbished watch would be meaningfully better, was told that it was probably the fault of my phone and a refurbished watch would also not work; when I said that I had checked the list of phones that were incompatible with Garmin to ensure my phone would work before I bought Garmin, was told that the list is not comprehensive, and that Garmin only checks "the major companies' phones"; to this I pointed out that Garmin's messaging feels misleading, as the way the information is presented makes it seem as though, provided your BlueTooth and Android meet the requirements and your phone is not explicitly mentioned, it seems fair to assume your phone will work (information here: https://support.garmin.com/en-AU/?faq=pvL8aWsaLU2iKyvF8VrpP9); we had reached an impasse (the person I was talking to is not responsible for this!) so I wrapped up the conversation
