Google Assistant on the Galaxy Watch4 is bright but buggy
When theSamsung Galaxy Watch4arrived last summer, it brought us thebest Android smartwatchto date. With smooth performance, robust (though maybe not the most accurate) health tracking, it was the peanut-butter-and-chocolate goodness of mixing Samsung and Google’s best traits into one wearable wonder. But the feature we’d wantedmoston a Samsung smartwatch was still missing: Google Assistant.
Samsung said before the watch was even released that Google Assistant was coming soon, a work-in-progress, and so we’ve waited with bated breath for months on end. Assistant has finallyarrived on the Galaxy Watch 4, and after finally getting down and dirty with the superior Android AI — you’ve gotten better, Bixby, just not enough — the excitement has faded in the face of reality.
Don’t get me wrong, Google Assistant can be wonderful on the Galaxy Watch 4 — but it’s wildly buggy and inconsistent.
Installation, disconnection, and re-installation
Google Assistant is now available to download to the Galaxy Watch 4series through Google Play on both the watch and phone. Once downloaded, you open the app on your watch, which then opens Assistant on your phone to activate in less than ten taps. After that, it’s simply a matter of either opening the app from the app drawer, setting the app to the press-and-hold shortcut for your home button (available in our handy set-up guide), or saying “OK Google” or “Hey Google” loud enough for the watch to hear it.
If you think, “Wow, that sounds pretty simple,” you are technically correct, and thank goodness, because there’s a semi-reasonable chance you’ll have to do this all twice. Why, you ask? There’s a bug that’s been causing Galaxy Watch4 devices torandomly unpairfrom their connected phones, and the only solution if and when that happens is to factory reset the watch and re-pair it from scratch.
Be prepared to do this twice.
This happened to numerous users and a few of our staff members in the days following Assistant’s arrived, and I thought I’d managed to dodge it after almost two weeks of smooth(ish) sailing. Nope, it got me, too; in the wee hours of a Saturday morning, and getting Assistant re-activated took yet another day after that. (Part of that was likely due to my poor Wi-Fi environment, as I did this all while out trying to enjoy my weekend.)
Once everything is paired and stabilized the second time, everything seems to be smooth sailing, so you might want to back up your watch before installing Assistant. Then, once it’s installed and activated, you can factory reset the watch preemptively and use the backup to restore your watch after re-pairing it with the phone.
Is this something that you should have to do for one of Google’s biggest services on the most popular Android watch in the world? No, but we do what we must in order to get a proper assistant on our wrists.
Commands and confusion
Of the three ways to trigger Assistant, I highly, HIGHLY recommend using the press-and-hold power button shortcut. Otherwise, there’s a chance the app will lock itself up and not actually work until you force stop the app via the Galaxy Wearable app on your phone.
Yes, really.
If you say the dreaded “Okay Google” with both your phone and watch within earshot — which is 95% of the time — Assistant on the phone will often take over rather than Assistant on the watch. When this happens, the app looks like it’s listening and the rainbow gradient at the bottom will move with your voice, but it won’t actually hear your command or even give you a “something went wrong.”
To get the app out of this semi-locked state, you may either go into Watch Settings > Apps > Assistant and Force stop the app or you can turn the watch off and on again. The first couple of times it happened, I thought I was just being weird, but it’s repeatable — and avoidable if you simply don’t use OK Google.
When Assistant actually parses your words on the watch, it works wonderfully. Assistant on-wrist answers general questions easily, and you’ll still get cards for sports scores, calendar events, and weather reports. Music controls are pretty decent except for some wonkiness when trying to go to a previous song.
Smart home controls, however, have been a mixed bag for me — though they might not necessarily be for you. See, Google Assistant is still connected to your Google Home setups, but it’s lacking the dedicated watch app; that won’t arrive on the Galaxy Watch4 until after its exclusivity on the Pixel Watch ends sometime after the Pixel Watch’s Q4 launch. This means that if you have access to more than one Google Home — I’m an admin on two, but you might be a guest in a friend/family member’s — you’re going to have to specify the room/home every single time.
So I have to say “turn off all apartment lights” rather than just “turn off all the lights.” And of course, Google Assistant doesn’t tell you that’s the hangup. If you’re not aware of the hangup, you’ll just a generic, “I don’t know which lights you mean.”
Battery impact
The most power-hungry Watch app to date is Assistant if you’re not careful.
Command confusion isn’t the only reason you might want to turn off “OK Google” detection on your watch; it impacts battery, too. In two full weeks of use, Assistant has averaged 10% of battery use whether I used it twenty times a day or two. Some users have been reporting up to60% battery usage by Google Assistanton their Watch4 via Reddit, but it’s sporadic enough that it’s quite possibly a bug, just more sporadic than the unpairing issue.
This isn’t completely unexpected; if the watch has to constantly listen for your command and lacks a dedicated AI core for voice detection/processing, then it’s obviously going to impact battery life. If you already have a tough time keeping your watch alive for an entire day — like me and my beloved GIF watch faces — turning off the wake work can both help stability and stretch that small power cell just a little further.
What’s next?
Google Assistant’s command options and features are all where we want them; now we just need Google and Samsung to nail down the stability, because expecting your device to break for one new feature is unacceptable in 2022. Would I love for Assistant to pop up over whatever app you’re currently in? Sure, but that kind of advanced UI isn’t even worth pondering until I can go more than a handful of days without having to force stop the app or reboot the watch to get Assistant working again.
Hopefully, this experience on the Watch4 improves, and we’re not left waiting for a solid experience on theGalaxy Watch5or theGoogle Pixel Watch. Then again, if the Pixel Watch really is running an older core chipset than the Watch4, even that seems circumspect.
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