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PSA: Samsung’s Gear wearables don’t work with Android 9 Pie just yet

Samsung’s Gear wearables are honestly some of the best available for Android devices, regardless of what smartphone you’re using. However, Samsung seems to be running into an issue with Android Pie, and none of those devices are working with the latest release yet.

Android 9 Pie has been in beta for a few months now, and as a Gear S3 user myself, I had no issues with connecting the watch in early releases of Google’s latest OS. However, in some of the later releases, something snapped and the functionality was broken completely.

The final release of Pie landed earlier this week, and we expected that it would end up fixing the compatibility issues that Gear devices had in later beta releases. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

As a collection of Reddit users have noted, the Samsung Gear app will not connect to your wearable following the Pie update. The app opens and starts the process, but crashes not too far into the process. If your device was already connected before the Pie update hit your device, it also seems to break the connection.

Hopefully, this is something that Samsung can quickly fix, as it affects everything from the Gear S3 to the company’s Gear IconX headphones. Samsung does note in some Play Store review responses that it is aware of the problem and will release a fix, but there’s currently no timeline there. We’ll keep an eye out for updates to the app.


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