Smartthings location function - Galaxy Watch 4

Devices & Integrations
1

Dear All

Apologies if this is the wrong forum to ask - if so, please let me know where you think may be better.
Issue or query is as follows: I am super-frustrated with trying to get the location feature on the Galaxy Watch 4 to work. One of our kids uses it, and I would like to be able to see her on the map. The watch is extremely erratic in location updates (sometimes gets spotted by another device, sometimes updates itself, but sometimes for days there is no update). If you have any tips (before I give it back…) then would be really grateful to hear about these (in particular what the ‘minimum’ features are that need to be ‘on’ for location to work - is that just the ‘location’ feature with mobile data or is it also, for example, bluetooth? Or just maybe NFC? Or just WiFi? Or all of them?).

Symptoms/situations are as follows:

  • WiFi on, NFC on, bluetooth on, mobile data on
  • mobile data set to be ‘always on’
  • I request manual updates but Smartthings does not refresh despite requests
  • sometimes works, sometimes does not work for days
  • I did a test run, outside of a building in my garden, with full reception and trying to locate the watch on my phone, to no avail
  • firmware is updated

Please let me know if you have any tips or fixes!

2

This forum was set up a number of years ago so that customers could help other customers with the smartthings home automation platform. The watches are quite popular, so there may be some community members who have ideas for you, but Samsung staff don’t monitor here, except for harassment and spam Type issues.

Samsung has a separate official forum which is monitored by Samsung staff, and you might get more answers there. (Of course, they might just send you back over here if they think it’s just an app issue, but I think it’s worth trying. )

Here’s that link:

3

I think he is trying to get the location of the watch in SmartThings Find.

My Watch4 shows as a device in Find but I only get location updates if I am near a phone because I did not get the cellular model. If your device does not have a Wi-Fi or cellular connection it will only update the location in Find via Bluetooth when the device comes in range of a Samsung phone. This is why you are seeing spotty updates. If you are looking for more real time updates a Samsung watch with a cellular connection will be what you are looking for.

1 Like