WEAR OS UPDATE 3.2 - Issues with the Galaxy Watch4
9.March.2022
Since the recent update of the Galaxy Watch4 firmware by Samsung (09.Feb.2022), all Cronosurf watch faces for Wear OS stopped working correctly. The watch face crashes when entering or exiting the ambient or screen-off mode. Eventually, the watch face reverts to the system's default digital time indication.
All our efforts so far to identify the cause of the problem in our code or to find a temporary workaround were unsuccessful. Everything seems to indicate that the graphic engine that we use, the Gles2WatchFaceService.engine (for OpenGL support), has been deprecated. This is being now confirmed with the latest documentation for developers by Google. Usually, deprecated components coexist longer time with newer ones such that developers have enough time to detect and replace them in the code by newer ones. Unfortunately, Samsung simply removed the deprecated component straight away and thus, developers using this engine, presumably not that many, had basically no time to react.
Watch faces that are developed with watch-face-designer tools were not affected by this, since those tools are generally kept up to date or use other components. However, we opted to code our watch face "by hand" in order to achieve full interactivity and functionality.
That being said, we are now analyzing our options to move forward. In the worst case scenario, we will have to recode the graphical part with one of the newer supported graphical engines. This would naturally take some time. We will keep you updated here as soon as we have any further news!
14.March.2022
After an extensive research time and many trials and errors, today we have found a workaround that seems to solve both the crashing problem and the empty ambient mode, and this without having to update to the new graphic engine! We are now testing this intensively for 24 hours, and if the tests are mostly positive, tomorrow we will be ready to release an update. Keep your fingers crossed!
This indicates that the support for the deprecated graphical engine was not completely removed, but rather a bug was introduced in the updating process by Samsung, and neither tested nor detected due to the fact that it is marked by Google as deprecated.
Regarding the migration to the newer graphical engine, it turns out that the change is much more extensive than we initially anticipated. It affects a whole set of system libraries for the development of watch faces for Wear OS, including the graphical engine. The change is also very recent and therefore the documentation is still not at its best. The available examples, which are so important for understanding the coding process, are virtually non-existent. This is why a workaround solution is extremely valuable now, since it will give us time to migrate to the new libraries when the time has come.
16.March.2022
Our tests have been successful so far! We are releasing today an update for our main app Cronosurf Wave (version 3.3.0).
Thanks to all for your patience!
18.March.2022
Phone version: On Android 12, a new permission requirement was introduced by Google in order to set exact alarms (needed for alarm and countdown timer in Cronosurf Wave). This was causing a crash in the app the moment an alarm or countdown was activated. The problem has been fixed on the 17th of March in version 3.3.1.
30.March.2022
Cronosurf Breeze&Air now also FIXED!! We released today the update for Breeze&Air (version 2.2.0) that solves the issue for our model Breeze&Air. Thanks to all our affected users for you engagement and patience!