The Simulator and real devices see to behave quite differently in this regard.
The simulator seems to clear all properties when ANY change is made to strings.xml, settings.xml, or properties.xml
I'm not certain of that, not having done exhaustive testing, but in my experiments that seems to be the case.
Those same changes, when built and loaded into a real watch, often do not erase the properties / settings.
I have a user community that relies on settings / properties for a significant amount of settup information so I don't want to release changes that will erase those settings.
Can anyone shed light on what changes to settings / properties / strings will erase settings on actual watches, and what changes will not ?????
The simulator would be much more useful in this regard if it acted like the actual devices do.
Thanks