Amazfit Day 67

 Ok, so I relented, the atrocious notification handling on the Amazfit default software drove me to distraction so Notify & Fitness was installed and now I have the schedule and the notifications and it's not too bad.

One loss is that the Weather panel is painfully slow to update, most times it is missing detail unless you sit there staring at it for about 30 seconds, then it updates & I have fed that back but obviously I don't expect to get any response as Huami just don't improve things as best I can tell.

I have been offered another replacement, it seems refund is not an option and I've been offered a 100-200USD voucher on Aliexpress to compensate for the postage....but when attempting to use the voucher it seems like perhaps a 10% discount on a 100-200USD purchase but given the product I already have doesn't work I don't feel inclined to add to my woes.

Anyway, so far my experience is that the watch gps is terrible but if I had no other option it at least puts me in the right county (we live close to a county border but luckily for that statement not too close) but does produce something akin to what happened. Not really useful on a day to day basis but Notify and fitness allows me to use the phone gps so manageable & I will move the workouts option down the list, not going to use it much and essentially the watch has become a really expensive fitness band.

What is interesting is that there appears to be no forward progress so to review the issues I had before the watch was returned for the first time :

Amazfit / Zepp Issues :

1. Amazfit X : GPS does not work, this, my second watch, does get a lock after a couple of minutes which is slow but it does get there it seems but the route is only indicative of reality at best.
2. Amazfit X : It's so useless I've given up.
3. Amazfit X : Regular SP02 sample not just manual (ia feedback).
4. Zepp : Have a UK style screen - gets annoying that weeks start on Sundays, they don't they start on Monday that way I have 2 days off at the end of a week. This applies to both the Watch faces and the Zepp data.
5. Zepp : Automatic updates.... Why in this day and age are updates only found if I open the app and stumble across them, for pete's sake at least send a notification. Reporting on Feedback and Indiegogo repeatedly. 
6. New suggestion : ability to change (remove or reorder) workout types on the watch to deprioritize those I will never use and bring those I will use top the top. Reported through Zepp feedback 1/10/20
7. Battery life, the new watch with all my tinkering and three 1 hour GPS plots has been 4 days to reach 14%, so perhaps 5 days. Somewhat under expectation.

Notify & Fitness issue :

1. Idle alerts in N&F, I thought they did not work but I have turned off the idle alerts in Zepp and do get idle alerts still, however, in the app I have set 10 minutes while I was testing and the idle alert is still working on 1 hour. Raised via support request through the report 9/10.

2. Smart alarms / alarms on the watch get lost - it appears that there is a conflict between Zepp & N&F that loses alarms, luckily I found out 5 minutes before I was supposed to be picking my son up from somewhere. Unfortunately until updates are reliably available / notified it's imperative to retain Zepp. 

Notify & Fitness suggestions  

1. Ability to reorder the list of workouts on the watch so that the ones I might do are near the top rather than off the bottom of the page. Raised via email 8/10/20
2. SP02 : add to the app and scheduled monitoring. Raised by email 7/10/20 and promised in the next release. Update 24/11/20 I can see that addition is planned next release, no idea if it will be automatic.
3. Stress : add to the app and scheduled monitoring. Raised by email 8/10/20. 24/11/20 I emailled because Stress is now in the app but not collected.
4. Ability to use goals that are calorie or steps (and sync with the watch) : Raised by email 7/10/20 & have seen an update that it will be available soon. 

Sleep as Android

1. Stop it turning off my smart alarms in N&F, I'm sure I just haven't figured out how yet and I really want just vibration for wake up.
2. ...or use Smart alarms on Sleep as Android...if it vibrates the watch before kicking off on the phone then great
3. How do I connect up a UK radio station, grr, insanely painful

Nice to haves :

1. I would very much like a simple watch face, literally just black with white hands. If I got excited I might suggest progressive banding of hand colour according to % of goals / pai to spice it up.

Amazfit & Zepp Issues no longer relevant because Notify & Fitness works - it is interesting how a little diligence appears to go a long way :

1. Tracked routes (when they do) have no detail about speed etc - this appears in N&F so it is a Zepp limitation.
2. Amazfit X : Whatps app messages get batched up to a summary count far too quickly (raised via Zepp Feedback)  - I still think this is too aggressive but that appears to be a summary item forcing you to go to the notifications view on the watch, unfortunately you can't swipe anywhere on the notification summary to get to the notifications, instead you have to swipe back to the main screen and then to notifications. It is worth nothing that N&F has much better handling of notifications and resolves this issue - it is so much better, indeed usable
3. Amazfit X : The schedule function is manual entry and does not sync with google calendary (outlook etc) (raised via Zepp Feebdack and Ticket #253401) - ticket has been closed - I'm told it isn't available at this time, others have been told it is not possible. Again N&F has the capability of syncing to a google calendar, not sure what Huami's problem is because this independent developer has done it (it's really good actually, I thought it would be like a gimic but it actually works and displays nicely).
4. Zepp : how do I export my data (raised via the campaign, Zepp feedback and a ticket, #253403), I have received an answer but it is not working yet, I have asked support and followed the instructions but it just generates empty files
5. Zepp : how can I configure the app to remove the adverts from the main screen (raised via Zepp feedback). If anyone is confused by "adverts" I mean Zepp self promoting.
6. Zepp : how can I configure the app to hide all the features that are not relevant to my device (raised via Zepp feedback) 
7. Zepp : the sleep tracking on the watch is poor, would be good to integrate with Sleep As Android. Latest firmware (1.0.1.30) has added "sleep breathing quality monitor, beta" so hopefully work has been carried out on the sleep module, again annoying that when I looked at my sleep record on Sunday morning it said none for the week because in America Sunday is the first day of the week. There is no indication of what this does / presents.
8. Workouts are not being synchronised with Google Fit, reported through Zepp feedback 1/10/20 but resolved by N&F.
9. New suggestion : smart alarms, work brilliantly with Notify & Fitness, clearly needs good sleep tracking, I did suggest this during the campaign but also 5/10 via feedback In zepp
   

Amazfit Closed Issues - and notably not a single fix by Huami so far: 

1. Amazfit X : Auto detection of activities - it seems that 10 minutes is a normal time to wake up and start collecting data but two hours of cycling isn't detected... just doesnt work but there is an on / off selection on the watch which is a blessed relief.
2. Zepp : Where to view the GPS route.....found it, it seems the refresh of zepp for workouts is very slow.

Othe Resolved :

1. The annoying single buzzes I was getting every moring, no ide where they came from but I did eventually pin down the annoying message about the amount of sleep (that would arrive just as I was waking up) which was buried in N&F.