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Comment by floppydive | Hacker News Reader

I reluctantly use a pixel with grapheneos, but anything that can only run google or manufacturer provided software without an independent 3rd party is trash, having looked at wearos while trying to refuse Samsungs terms/integration I also consider it a worse grade of trash than a phone since it can intentionally create codependency on other devices for management despite having more processing power than android 2-4 phones had.

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Pixel Watches have an unlocked bootloader [1] and publish factory images [2].

That being said, it appears that the main open source version of WearOS (AsteroidOS) only supports watches that are 5-10 years old [3].

I suspect that if you did try to flash this watch, you would experience a whole host of rough edges.

[1] https://9to5google.com/2022/10/21/pixel-watch-bootloader-unl...

[2] https://developers.google.com/android/images-watch

[3] https://asteroidos.org/watches/

Edit: past pixels watches have an unlocked bootloader, I assume this one will as well. I don't see this information in the announcement post.

It really does feel like such a waste. If I switch to Android I might as well toss my Apple Watch out and vice versa. Along with the fact they basically require the phone to do nearly anything.

I'm pretty happy with a Pixel 9 running GrapheneOS and a Garmin that I never connected to a Garmin account. I use https://codeberg.org/Freeyourgadget/Gadgetbridge instead (then synced to my computer with syncthing), and I don't miss anything from Garmin.

I'm 100% Google free, and far happier with tech that I ever was.

Gadgetbridge is great and can even recover a pretty good experience from the touch oriented watches/bands that look deceptively like smartphone equivalents.. But I think the actual smart OS level watches would need a replacement firmware first and the an implementation for talking to gadgetbridge.

Gadgetbridge is pissing me off because there have a forced always on non dismissible notification message that I can't get ride off. For example when no watch associated. So I have to manually kill the app.

I think that is a general Android setting as for any app that registers notifications: AppInfo -> notifications -> other -> scanning service

I'm using a cheap samsung watch, maybe 4? It's ages old at this point, but I need it to get contactless pay, I'm a sucker for it. I have multiple company and personal and virtual cards on it, and I don't like carrying a wallet everywhere with me.

What's specially shitty with using a wearos watch with an android phone is that clock's alarms etc do not sync, at least not between grapheneos <-> samsung galaxy watch 4. I have to use use turboclock which has a wearos app to get wakeup alarms to my watch.

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