So, my phone presence sensor was kinda dead - hadn’t updated in who knows when. So I deleted it and created a new one with the classic app. Then I went and created a new phone presence with the new app. Now I have two presence sensors for my phone.
Here’s the thing…the one I created with the new app is awful. I left the house this morning at 6:46am. The old app presence recorded it right away. The new one reported it as 8:09am. Later, when I came back home, the gap was almost the same with the new app presence reporting at 5:46pm (vs 4:25pm). That’s 83 minutes in the morning and 81 minutes in the afternoon.
Anyone else noticed this? Any thoughts on making the new app reliable (since we expect eventually the classic one will get killed)?
I noticed. New App, Hub v2. I left home and nothing happened. Hob did not go into the usual Armed (Away) mode. So I set it manually. But when I returned it went into DIsarmed mode.
This has been much discussed, there are a number of threads about it in the forum.
Basically If you have both apps on one phone, presence will be flaky. Usually it’s a problem in the new V3 app, but it can also cause problems in the classic.
If you want to use both apps, it works better if you have them on two different devices. This isn’t true for everyone, but many of the people using classic are doing so because of configuration issues, so they can just run classic on a tablet that gets left at home.
With the most recent app updates, I have been using presence on both apps with no issues. Note: I did reset the network settings on my iPhone so I can’t say for sure if that helped. But again, for the past two weeks I have been using both apps with presence and everything is working. Prior to that, I had issues with presence in the new app - mainly it would turn itself off if presence was enabled in Classic
I’m loathe to delete the classic presence since it’s finally working well. I had issues in the ancient past but now it seems good. And I also notice that advanced settings are now available in the new app. So as the new app gets “better”, the writing is on the wall regarding classic.
I have an android (s10) so I did double check battery optimization. The weird thing is I have 3 “entries” for the new smartthings (vs 1 for classic). One of the 3 new ones was “optimized” (read as the phone will put it to sleep). Not sure why there are 3 items, but I’ll see what it dies with that change now and report back…
This post is quite timely. I just completely switched from Classic to the new app on all our family phones, and I’m seeing reliability issues with our oldest phone. To be clear, when I mean switched, I mean switched. I removed mobile presence from all phones prior to uninstalling Classic, including removing any app/automation using presence. After I did that I started fresh with each phone and the new app. No phones are using both mobile apps.
The phone we’re having issues with is an older S4, which is really quite basic. There are hardly any apps installed, with the new ST app probably being the most used and largest app installed on the phone. Our other phones (Note 5, and an iPhone) are working perfectly.
That S4 typically reports presence 10 to 15 minutes way after it’s arrived, and/or left; but mostly it does’t do either. Restarting the phone does help for a while, but that’s not an acceptable solution. When using the Classic mobile app, we never, ever had a presence issue with this phone. I will email support, but I hope this isn’t a long running issue that may cause me to have to reinstall Classic on that phone.
After taking the new app off of battery optimization, I waited to see if some presence-related routines I had would trip this morning when I left. Specifically, I had a routine to toggle a virtual device. That didn’t happen, nor did the status of either phone presence change.
Looking at them later, they both changed status when I manually flipped the virtual device. More to come, I suppose…
Boy, I’m really starting to notice reliability issues with presence and the new app.
Wife’s S4 still showing several minutes, to hours, to never being right.
My daughter’s iPhone said presence was “present” even though she’s not been home in weeks, but occupancy states “unoccupied”. Having her get into the app kickstarted that a couple hours later.
And now my rock solid Note 5, which never ever had a problem with Classic’s presence, didn’t work until I restarted the phone just now after I got home.
Thanks for the updates @johnconstantelo, @doncaruana. My wife has gone up north for the week so I am in the process of moving the rest of my stuff to the new app and cleaning things up. Based on the reliability issues with presence, I’ll keep using Life 360.