Android Wear Bug Reportedly Closes Full-Screen Apps Using Accelerometer

The Android Wear bug reportedly closes the full screen app and shows the pedometer card on the main home screen of the smartwatch, resulting in users to restart the app repeatedly.

A new Android Wear bug has been reported that leads to an unexpected shutdown of full-screen apps using the smartwatch's accelerometer.

As per the user who posted the bug, only those apps using the accelerometer are affected that run as a full screen activity. The app crash is said to arise due to a conflict for accelerometer data, as Android Wear smartwatches natively use accumulated data from the accelerometer to update the pedometer count.

The Android Wear bug reportedly forces a full-screen app using the accelerometer to shutdown, and the user is shown a pedometer card on the home screen of the smartwatch instead.

"I have an interactive Android Wear activity running in full screen mode. It uses the accelerometer for input. While interacting with the device, the app will be randomly stopped and thrown back to the clock homescreen to show a new card, mostly the pedometer step counter increasing due to my chosen input method. This leads to frustrating user experience, as the app needs to be constantly restarted," stated the user on the Android Open Source Project page.

Notably, the user who faced the issue also detailed a workaround method for app developers to avoid this unexpected closing of apps. The developers instead of starting such apps on full screen, can create a "persistent notification in the context stream" preventing other cards to stop the app's activity.

"Instead of starting your app as a full screen activity, try creating a persistent notification in the context stream, then, give that notification an action to go full screen. This should prevent other cards from stopping your activity, so you can continue to collect accelerometer data and display it to your users," stated the user as per Android Authority.

Google is yet to comment on the issue or roll out an update to eliminate the bug.

On a related note, a designer named UhrArt cloned the Apple Watch's watch face for Android Wear-powered smartwatches on Monday. However, the circular icons seen on the cloned Pear watchface are just for show and does not function in the Android Wear powered devices.