Arccos Link and Wear OS Together?

jwhowles · December 19, 2021

Looking for feedback from anyone who has used Arccos Link and a Wear OS device together. From what it sounds like on the Arccos site, you can use a smartwatch for GPS distances and the Link for shot tracking, thus eliminating the need for the phone in your pocket at all. That's kind of my holy grail right now.

jg1166 · December 20, 2021

Correct, I use a link with an Apple Watch 6. You have to start your round on the phone and select the link for shot detection and then start the app on the watch which will give you your GPS distances. You can lhen leave your phone in your bag/cart and it works fine.

I have been using this combo for a hile with the Bet watch app but it has improved with the watch pp release.

So your holy grail is available

jwhowles · December 21, 2021

On 12/20/2021 at 3:32 PM, jg1166 said:

Correct, I use a link with an Apple Watch 6. You have to start your round on the phone and select the link for shot detection and then start the app on the watch which will give you your GPS distances. You can lhen leave your phone in your bag/cart and it works fine.

I have been using this combo for a hile with the Bet watch app but it has improved with the watch pp release.

So your holy grail is available

This is EXACTLY what I was hoping to hear. Thanks for your help!!

TomBomb51 · December 23, 2021

On 12/21/2021 at 6:08 PM, jwhowles said:

This is EXACTLY what I was hoping to hear. Thanks for your help!!

Yes, what you said is correct., but I just want to help clarify something.

You're asking about Wear OS. The response from jg1166 is for watchOS on an Apple Watch. Wear OS is Android's watch OS.

Which I cannot directly answer your question about Wear OS, I have a Samsung Galaxy Watch 3 and a Samsung Galaxy S21, which runs Tizen OS and used it all year last year. Generally, its a decent experience but it is VERY flaky. The app closes on the watch, GPS sometimes just doesnt show up on the watch even though its working on my phone fine, sometimes I cant even get the watch and the phone to sync at all before a round. My troubleshooting steps were everything you could think of minus a factory reset of my phone. The team at Arccos had basically said that they develop everything on iOS and Apple's platform, then port it over to Android to make it work and I think that causes the flakiness. They have claimed that they are rehauling everything on Android but that was at the beginning of last year and there has been no update since.

I truly feel like you will have an awesome experience with an iPhone and Apple Watch, but I honestly would not recommend using it on the Android platform, whether you use Tizen OS (on older Samsung Galaxy Watches) or Wear OS (newer Samsung Galaxy Watch and other Android watches).

jwhowles · January 3, 2023

So, circling back around to this for anyone who's curious because there wasn't much info when I searched last year and I assume there probably still isn't a ton.

Arccos works with Wear OS devices and Link at the same time but I ran into much the same issues as TomBomb51. These were issues on any of the courses I played last year:

Laggy watch GPS: Phone updated quickly - watch didn't. They had different distances frequently with the phone being more accurate.
Laggy communication between phone/Link/watch: Often I would hit a shot and, while it registered almost immediately on my phone, my watch wouldn't update quickly. This was especially problematic on putts, which often wouldn't register on the watch until I got to the next hole.
Less than stellar app functionality on my watch (an older, but updated, Fossil): The main issue I had with general functionality was that the Arccos app wouldn't ever close on my watch. That created a battery drain if I didn't go in and force stop the app after every round.

Overall, this setup CAN work but the devices just don't "talk to each other" quickly enough.