Time doesn't update on Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 for WatchFaceKotlin in ambient mode

[LouisCAD]

Hello,

Below is a picture (yep, shooting it was a struggle, I had to be a bit creative), where you can see a TicWatch E3, showing the right time, and a Samsung Galaxy Watch 4, paired to the same device, that stopped updating the time when it went to sleep, and is stuck about 10 minutes in the past (in the picture, it's still stuck, it's going past the quarter now).

Both watches are running the last revision of WatchFaceKotlin from this repo.

When I read the article headlined "Latest Galaxy Watch 4 update seems to break some older Wear OS watch faces", I had a facepalm moment, thinking that despite all the joint effort between Google and Samsung, having such a basic thing as showing the right time on a watch break was quite a joke, especially on a watch supposed to be smarter that most Swiss ones.

At the same time, I thought "I understand, probably they didn't test old watch faces because they were out of time or because they are working on their testing strategy".

I expected that it would only affect Watch Faces made without androidx.wear.watchface… but it's not the case as you can see.

I know this is not an issue in this sample, but I don't know any way to reach the right people at Samsung to fix that, and urgently, because despite all the ecological consciousness that I have, a watch that doesn't show the right time is destined to trash, not to the store shelves and to be used as a work tool for developers.

I hope there will be more collaboration regarding quality assurance between Samsung, and Google (which does a very good job interacting with the developer community, thank you for that), so that we and users don't find show stoppers like that.

One last thing, I'm renovating a Watch Face project I made 6 years ago, and this time, I plan to put it on the Play Store in the next 3 months. I won't be able to publish it for the now major smartwatch seller if this issue keeps standing, it'd hurt me more and would make my time investment worthless, so I really hope this can be fixed very soon.

Thank you for your help, and have a great everything,

Louis CAD

[LouisCAD]

154867385-76ce3c32-bdd5-434c-9d45-9dad70455b03.mp4

Here's a bonus video that shows the watch broke updating the time in ambient mode as the late minute clock hand catches up on wakeup.

[garanj]

Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention. We're working on a fix at the moment in collaboration with Samsung and will update this issue with further information when we have it.

[LouisCAD]

Samsung published another update, and while there's an improvement, it's not fully fixed:

If the watch is locked (happens after boot, and if the watch was off-wrist), it doesn't update the ambient mode watch face, showing time from the past.

When the watch is unlocked, it now finally correctly show the right time, so I guess Samsung now just needs to remove what prevents it from working the same while the watch is locked. Are they aware of this important remaining issue?

[garanj]

Thanks for this feedback; I'll check in and make sure that they are. Much appreciated.

[LouisCAD]

Hello, do we have any news from Samsung on this issue striking while the watch is locked?

[yschimke]

I believe it's close but I don't have dates, not sure which exactly is the tracking bug.

https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/219275784
https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/219545354

[LouisCAD]

I can't access these Googler-only links 😶

[yschimke]

@LouisCAD updated

[LouisCAD]

Still reproducible on Wear OS 3.5 by Samsung