14 DAY TRIAL // As you might as well know, Samsung’s new wearables have become available for purchase and will soon ship out to customers across the world. But early adopters of the Gear 2 Neo have already stumbled upon an issue with the new smartwatch.
The Gear 2 Neo is supposed to be compatible with a full host of Samsung devices, including the Galaxy Grand 2, Galaxy Note 3 Neo and the new Galaxy NotePRO 12.2 and Galaxy TabPRO 12.2/10.1/8.4. Samsung’s official page also lists the Galaxy Note 3 smartphone as one of the devices that are supposed to be in sync with the smartwatch.
But guess what? The Gear 2 Neo doesn't connect to the Note 3, so if you bought the smartwatch and are an user of the smartphone, you’ll find you can’t do much with it.
Tizenexperts reports this is due to an issue with the Samsung Gear Manager and an official fix will be rolled out on April 11. In the meantime, we don’t know whether this is a Note 3 Android-related issue or there’s some other underlying problem.
Anyway, if you don’t want to wait until later this week to get the fix, you can try out two unofficial fixes that could help you to put the problem behind.
Be advised that in one case you will have to download a leaked version of the Samsung Gear Manager in one case, while in the other you will be employing a workaround on a rooted phone. But if you choose to go ahead and follow the instructions bellow, you’ll be doing so at your own risk.
Solution 1
1. First of all, download the Galaxy Gear Manager app version 2.0.14031004 from the XDA Developer forum;
2. Check if you can install .apk files on your Note 3. To see if this is the case, you should access Settings-General-Security and go to Unknown Sources;
3. Use a file manager to Launch the Download GearManager_2.apk file;
4. Once installed, you should try connecting to your smartwatch. You might have to cancel the connection from the phone and retry the connection.
Solution 2
For this solution to work, you will be needing a rooted phone.
1. Download Market Enabler from the XDA Developer Forums;
2. Launch the app, but be sure to back up your settings before doing anything;
3. Set it to Australia (AU in the list, where there seems to be a newer version of Gear manager available);